Your website is one of the main ways families get information from your school. They use it to find calendars, forms, menus, transportation updates, board information, and contact details. If that experience breaks down for someone using a screen reader, captions, or keyboard navigation, access to that information breaks down too.

When more than 1 in 4 U.S. adults report having a disability, those challenges are more common than you might think.

For public schools and districts, the legal landscape has also become more defined. In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued its final Title II rule on the accessibility of web content and mobile apps for state and local governments, including public schools.

The DOJ makes clear that the ADA’s broader requirements around effective communication and equal access have long applied to government services offered online. At the same time, the rule points public entities to WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard, with compliance dates of April 2026 or April 2027, depending on the size of the entity.

That said, accessibility work is bigger than legal exposure. It reaches into trust, usability, and the day-to-day experience families have with your school. A parent trying to register a child, a grandparent looking for an event, or a guardian relying on captions or keyboard navigation shouldn't have to work harder than everyone else to get basic information.

Accessibility starts with people, not checklists

It is easy to let this topic become overly technical. Acronyms pile up, regulations enter the conversation, and the whole discussion can drift away from the people the site is meant to serve. A better place to begin is with a simpler standard:

• Can families find what they need?
• Can they understand what they're reading?
• Can users complete important tasks without barriers?

Much of the work starts with habits that strong school communicators already value: writing descriptive links, structuring content with headings, captioning videos, using readable contrast, and keeping forms straightforward.

Once you see accessibility as part of good publishing that helps the users behind the screen, everything seems a little more manageable.

And that's also when knowing the WCAG becomes useful. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines organize accessibility around four principles:  content should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

In practice, that means a page should not depend on sight alone, mouse use alone, or a narrow set of technical assumptions. It should work across devices, across assistive technologies, and across the many ways people actually interact with the web.

Keep Reading: 17 Website Accessibility Questions — Answered!

Older documents deserve special attention. School websites often contain large libraries of PDFs, board packets, flyers, forms, and archived materials. Those files can be some of the hardest content to access, particularly when they were created years ago without accessibility in mind. Your school's accessibility work needs to extend well beyond the homepage and into the interior and high-traffic pages families use every day.

Where to begin if your site needs work

If your website has years of accumulated content, the answer is not to fix everything at once. That approach usually overwhelms teams and delays progress. Start with a more realistic plan:

1. Take inventory
2. Understand what you have
3. Prioritize the content people depend on most

For schools, that often means starting with current high-traffic pages and materials tied to core services.

Start with images and graphics

Add short, useful alt text to images that carry information. If an image is decorative and adds no meaning, handle it as decorative so that assistive technology does not treat it like essential content. Missing text alternatives are a common barrier because screen readers can't interpret the meaning of an image on their own.

Fix video and audio content

Add synchronized captions to videos and transcripts where appropriate. This is one of the fastest ways to improve access to announcements, welcome videos, board updates, and event recaps.

Review forms carefully

Forms for registration, inquiries, employment, transportation, and contact requests all need labels, keyboard access, guidance, and helpful error handling. If a family can't tell what belongs in a field or can't navigate a form without a mouse, that form is not doing its job.

Clean up the structure and navigation

Headings should follow a logical order, link text should describe where it goes, and the site should be usable with a keyboard. W3C places keyboard access, navigation, readability, and compatibility at the center of WCAG, and DOJ highlights mouse-only navigation as another common barrier.

Check contrast and color use

Low contrast makes text hard to read, and color alone should not be the only way you signal meaning, especially in forms, alerts, or calls to action.

Accessibility needs a workflow, not a one-time fix

The biggest mistake schools make is treating accessibility as a huge milestone rather than an ongoing content practice.

After your initial audit or redesign, the work shifts to the people adding news posts, calendar items, staff pages, PDFs, forms, photos, and videos. Train your staff on accessibility best practices and consider partnering with an accessibility provider for additional support. 

Just remember that automated checkers can help, but they're not a finish line, and a clean report doesn't automatically mean a page is fully accessible. You still need human review, content standards, and a shared understanding of what good accessible publishing looks like across your team.

Lean on Your Website Provider

We all know time and resources are limited for school districts, so before you go too far down the road trying to figure out website accessibility, your first call should be to your website provider. Having a provider who is knowledgeable in this area will be helpful, as they likely have extensive experience and advice on website compliance. 

Don’t Rule out a Full Redesign

If your website hasn’t been redesigned in the last three to five years, starting from scratch through a complete redesign might be less stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. Websites built before the ADA compliance legislation didn’t follow the same design structure and guidelines that they do today. Trying to fix a site built in a previous era may not be worthwhile. 

Keep Reading: [Checklist] How to Select a Website Vendor for an ADA Compliant Website

Key takeaway

If your school website accessibility work feels large, start smaller. Focus on the pages families use most. Fix the barriers that block access first, train the people who publish content every week, and then build accessibility into your normal workflow, so it stays part of how your site runs. That approach serves families better and puts your school in a much stronger position over time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Connor has spent the last decade within the field of marketing and communications, working with independent schools and colleges throughout New England. At Finalsite, Connor plans and executes marketing strategies and digital content across the web. A former photojournalist, he has a passion for digital media, storytelling, coffee, and creating content that connects.