The UNLV offices of educational compliance and accessibility resources recognize Rasheda Abdullah Hairston, communications specialist in UNLV Business Affairs, as our January 2025 Rebel Accessibility Hero.
From the nomination letter presented by Heather Ortiz, director of communication in UNLV Business Affairs and our December 2023 Rebel Accessibility Hero:
Since joining the Business Affairs communication team in 2022, Rasheda has made it her mission to learn all she can about digital accessibility. She participated in numerous accessibility training sessions and set up regular check in meetings with campus accessibility experts to hone her skills. As a result, she has become an exemplary ally for accessibility for the Business Affairs and Human Resources teams.
For two years, she spearheaded the Accessibility Ambassador Program, an initiative designed to build accessibility awareness and capabilities among the diverse teams in Business Affairs and Human Resources. Rasheda planned meeting topics and worked with presenters to ensure a breadth of topics were covered. She was focused on providing participants with a well-rounded experience so they had the knowledge and skills necessary to create and remediate accessible documents.
By 2024, the facilitators of the Accessibility Ambassador Academy determined it was time to evolve the program into the Accessibility Ambassador Academy, a six-week training program with clear learning objectives. Rasheda was at the forefront of this effort. She worked with the web accessibility specialist and Office of Accessibility Resources to outline a comprehensive strategy. The strategy was presented to leadership and approved! She then led the planning and development team to ensure they were on track for launch. The pilot program began in fall 2024 and is looking forward to graduating its first group of participants in March 2025. Everyone who completes all the course requirements will receive an accessibility ambassador microcredential (badge).
In 2023 and 2024 she led initiatives to support Global Accessibility Awareness Day. In 2023, her Fix Your Content Day initiative challenged Business Affairs and HR teams to remediate 80 documents currently posted on their webpages within a three-week period. She developed messaging and worked with OIT to create a webpage graph that tracked our progress. It was a huge success! The divisions exceeded this goal and remediated more than 100 documents, greatly increasing their digital accessibility score. In 2024, she worked with campus experts to arrange an engaging training in-person for our team members.
Beyond this work, Rasheda implements accessible practices into her daily work and is an advocate for inclusivity on our campus. She believes in making content accessible for all and sharing knowledge so we can all make it happen.
From Jerra Strong, our inaugural Rebel Accessibility Hero (May 2023):
In my mind, Rasheda is a Rebel Accessibility Hero because of her willingness to spearhead new and innovative solutions to building an accessibility culture at UNLV. As a communications professional, she is able to work with every unit and team within Business Affairs and HR. Her goal is to help them tell their story in such a way that it reaches the largest possible audience, and that includes making it accessible!
Rasheda is not afraid to come up with creative solutions, and has generated new ways to reward and motivate the staff. She is not afraid to ask questions like “Can we make a new website for this? Can it be more exciting or motivating?” and that pushes the boundaries of how we as a university operate. When she commits to getting something done, I know that it will get done, and well! In the largest and most long-term projects we have worked on together, Rasheda is often the one that keeps me on track, which ensures continuity for our training and for the organization as a whole.
Please join us all as we recognize Rasheda as our first Rebel Accessibility Hero of 2025!