The Eagle’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee discussed its intentions to improve accessibility on the paper’s website at a meeting Wednesday.
Editor-in-Chief Clare Mulroy announced that the paper is looking into creating audio narration for web articles, as well as creating transcripts for podcasts.
The group also discussed ideas to increase accessibility on the paper’s social media pages. The paper’s multimedia team is working to ensure that alt text is available for images in articles. The online team is conversely applying alt text to social media posts, as well as increasing opportunities for community members to submit questions and comments via Instagram’s Q&A feature.
Members of the DEI group will work to create the foundation of the equity guide this semester and will use an equity guide from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism as inspiration.
The guide will provide a comprehensive history of American University, the Eagle and the surrounding D.C. community to provide staff with the resources needed to report accurately and fairly on the greater AU community.
The guide will also include style rules for reporting on marginalized communities, which comes amid a thorough review of the Eagle’s internal style sheet.
The group expects to have a rough draft of the guide by the end of the semester.
