An accessible school website and compliance are no longer emerging issues. They are top-of-mind across industries — and if you haven’t gotten on board with the latest ADA web guidelines yet, here are some tips for getting started. 

Working in education, you are familiar with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which has been around since 1975. The federal legislation ensures students with disabilities are provided a Free, Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). You’re likely also familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted in 1990, which prohibits discrimination based upon disability. 

Although these two very significant laws have been around for decades, it wasn’t until 2016 that ADA was amended to include regulations specific to school and government web designs. Yes, you must ensure that your buildings are handicapped accessible, and that the students you educate have equal access to education. You must ALSO ensure the same safeguards are in place for your websites. 

Many school districts and public universities navigated this process between 2016-18, when a string of lawsuits were filed through the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for non-compliant school websites nationwide. If you found your district among the first to deal with these complaints and the remediation that followed, you may agree it was a somewhat scary and uncertain time. Many website providers and school communicators didn’t know much about accessibility until a lawsuit was staring them in the face. 

Now, schools and website providers have had years to learn what it means to have an accessible website, and what steps to take to make sure yours meets the mark. 

Still not convinced that you need to dedicate the time and energy to website accessibility? Some schools, universities and districts are willing to roll the dice until the OCR knocks on their door before taking action. This is a bad public relations AND financial move.

Even if an OCR complaint is resolved, some schools and districts feel they’ve checked the accessibility box and don’t maintain their websites and ADA compliance moving forward. If you haven’t already made your website compliant with ADA, it’s not too late.

Here are considerations for schools and districts getting started with ADA requirements. 

1. It’s More Than Just the Law: Accessibility for Ethics and Equity
2. Breaking Down Key WCAG Principles
3. Fixing an Inaccessible Website: How to Make the Process Easier
4. Post-Compliance: Maintaining Accessibility

Accessibility for Ethics and Equity

If you're like most schools and districts, your mission, vision, and values statements mention equity or equal opportunities for students. We don’t say this to sound cliche. Of course your school district should value equity and ethics!

Providing opportunities to ALL students is part of the deep rooted history of public schools, and is something you should be proud of. Would you operate a public school without wheelchair accessible entrances and bathrooms? No. Then why would you operate a public school website that doesn’t provide access to information for users with disabilities, regardless of their physical or cognitive impairments?

Part of the hang-up with schools who aren’t yet on board with website accessibility is the lack of understanding. Who’s served by these accessibility measures? Primarily, web accessibility is for all disabilities that affect a person’s access to your digital content, including visual, cognitive, auditory, and physical impairments — about a quarter of the world's population.

For example, if a person relies on a screen reader to navigate a website, instead of using a mouse or trackpad, can they click through each page without difficulty? If someone with a vision impairment visits your website, can they decipher what is featured in your photo gallery? These are just a few examples of who web accessibility measures help, and why their needs should matter to you and your school district. 

Breaking Down Key WCAG Principles

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the internationally recognized standards for web accessibility. They're organized around four core principles, often remembered by the acronym POUR:

• Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means providing alternatives for non-text content, ensuring content can be adapted to different sensory needs, and making it easy for users to see and hear content.
• Operable: User interface components and navigation must be operable, meaning that all functionality is available via keyboard navigation, providing users with enough time to read and use content, and avoiding content that could cause seizures.
• Understandable: Information and the operation of the user interface must use clear and simple language, providing consistent navigation, and helping users avoid and correct mistakes.
• Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies, like screen readers. 

Users with cognitive disabilities, such as learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, or memory impairments, may face unique challenges when accessing web content. To make websites more accessible, consider these points:

• Clear and Consistent Navigation: Use simple and consistent navigation menus, clear page titles, and breadcrumb trails.
• Simple Language: Use plain language, avoid jargon, and define any technical terms.
• Logical Organization: Organize content logically using headings, subheadings, and lists.
• Visual Aids: Use visuals, such as icons, diagrams, and videos, to supplement text content.
• Minimize Distractions: Avoid clutter, animations, and other distracting elements.
• Provide Summaries: Offer summaries of lengthy articles or pages.
• Consistent Layout: maintain a consistent layout throughout the website.
• Provide clear instructions for forms and interactive elements.

Multimedia content, such as videos and audio recordings, can be inaccessible to users with sensory disabilities. To make multimedia accessible:

• Captions: Provide synchronized captions for all videos.
• Audio Descriptions: Provide audio descriptions for videos that describe important visual information.
• Transcripts: Provide text transcripts for all audio content.
• Sign Language Interpretation: Consider providing sign language interpretation for videos.
• Control over Media: Allow users to control the playback of multimedia content, such as pausing, stopping, and adjusting volume.
• Color Contrast for Visually Impaired Users: Color contrast is the difference in luminance or brightness between foreground and background colors. Insufficient color contrast can make it difficult for users with low vision or color blindness to read text or see important information. WCAG guidelines require a minimum color contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.

So what now? If you're just getting started with website accessibility, the good news is that many schools and web providers have already gone through this process, so there are an abundance of resources to work with. 

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 your website provider. Having a provider that is knowledgeable in this area will be a game-changer for you, as they likely have an abundance of experience and advice regarding website compliance. 

A reputable school website provider like Finalsite will be able to walk you down the path to compliance step-by-step, from the initial discussion, to education and training, to complete resolution. 

Don’t Rule out a Full Redesign

If your website hasn’t been redesigned in the last four 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. 

RELATED CONTENT

• 17 Website Accessibility Questions — Answered!
• 5 Steps to Building and Maintaining an Accessible Website
• [Checklist] How to Select a Website Vendor for an ADA Compliant Website

Post-Compliance: Maintaining Accessibility

Too often, we hear of school districts that resolve OCR complaints and go back to their old ways regarding website accessibility. Just because the OCR has given you the green light does not mean your accessibility journey is over! 

It is not out of the realm of possibility for the OCR to revisit your school district’s site and flag it again down the road. That’s right, you could face a second lawsuit if accessibility is not maintained. Moreover, let’s revisit the first point from this post: equity and ethics! Legal matters aside, it is the right thing to do to ensure all of your content remains accessible for your visitors. 

Some of you may wonder what’s left to do once your site is compliant? Shouldn’t you be good to go from there? The short answer is no, website accessibility is never “done.” You create new content on your website every day.

Every new image, announcement and calendar item added must also be accessible, and that ownership lies with the content contributors, not the website provider. 

The good news is, this doesn’t need to be a daunting task. Finalsite Composer has built in accessibility tools that will flag content that falls outside of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and offers suggestions to resolve those issues. Finalsite also partners with AudioEye whose product includes an accessibility toolbar to make website content accessible to all visitors, as well as an auto-remediation service that detects accessibility errors and fixes them.

There are additional best practices for website managers that will save you time and energy down the road that you can read more about here.

Key Takeaway

Website compliance and accessibility is more than a legal requirement for school districts and public universities. Having accessible web content also speaks to your school’s views on equity, inclusion, and ethics. Although it can seem overwhelming, the steps needed to reach accessibility don’t have to be daunting. Getting started is the most challenging part!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angelo graduated valedictorian from St. Paul's School in Baltimore, MD and from Princeton University. Despite getting his degree in creative writing and English Literature, it generally takes some doing to keep him from programming and breaking websites. Just after graduating, he started Silverpoint, and grew it to over 300 schools worldwide before merging with Finalsite in 2013.