An accessibility-focused update is improving users’ experiences with the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS).
The update, which rolled out in March, removed unnecessary symbols (such as asterisks and dashes), spaces, and all-capitalized words within DARS reports for students in the College of Letters and Science (L&S). This has made it easier for undergraduate students and staff in the largest school/college on campus – especially those using screen readers or other assistive technologies – to read the information on the page.
More than 5,000 total entries had to be updated, some of which dated back to their original encoding more than two decades ago. This work was necessary in part to comply with a federal rule requiring the university’s digital resources to be accessible by April 24, 2026.
“DARS is a crucial tool that all undergraduates and their advisors rely on to track degree progress,” says degree audit encoding specialist Makenzie Relford. “Even small improvements can make a significant difference for tens of thousands of members of the campus community.”
The Office of the Registrar, along with campus partners, has been diligently working to modernize both the student and staff DARS experiences. For this project, the Office of the Registrar partnered with L&S’ Academic Information Management (AIM) team.
Last fall, the university launched a new DARS app for advisors with a number of new features that give staff more information about students’ academic progress and goals.
Looking Ahead
A future phase of this project will update language about course requirements to be consistent across both DARS reports and the L&S Guide. Currently, some requirements are worded differently across various L&S departments, which can cause confusion.