Teaching Accessibility through Automated Audits: Using ANDI in Higher Education

The U.S. Department of Justice’s April 2026 deadline for Title II web accessibility compliance places new urgency on higher education institutions to adopt sustainable accessibility practices. Yet, many universities continue to focus remediation narrowly on disability services pages, leaving their broader digital presence inaccessible to students, faculty, and the public. This paper presents a teaching strategy that leverages the Accessible Name and Description Inspector (ANDI), a free audit tool developed by the U.S. Social Security Administration, as both an instructional and governancemechanism. By training IT staff and content authors to use ANDI, institutions can identify recurring accessibility barriers, connect them to WCAG 2.1 AA and Title II obligations, and establish governance routines that foster sustainable compliance. The method is illustrated through a multi-institution audit of higher education websites, including a case study showing how false positives can serve as teaching moments. This contribution is explicitly positioned as a teaching note, offering a practical and scalable model for embedding accessibility education into institutional governanceand compliance.