SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Appleton Area School District
How the District Streamlined Accessible Content Ahead of Title II Deadlines
As one of the largest districts in Wisconsin, Appleton Area School District's commitment to support “every student, every day” made it clear that its accessibility work couldn’t wait any longer.
Ensuring that every family could easily access important information online was a critical part of delivering on that promise. For years, though, much of the district’s information lived in PDFs, scanned documents, and other formats that were difficult to search, translate, or navigate.
At a Glance
Located in northeast Wisconsin, the AASD serves the city of Appleton and its nearly 75,000 residents.
Digital accessibility had always been part of the district’s thinking, but as federal accessibility deadlines approached, Appleton saw an opportunity to improve compliance and rethink how important information was shared with families across the district’s many schools.
“Accessibility’s always been in the back of our mind, because we’re a big district,” shared Lynn Streubel of Appleton Area School District’s Information Technology Department. “When we picked Finalsite, we talked to the different vendors that we interviewed about their accessibility and making sure things are ADA compliant. But since that federal mandate, it’s been at the forefront of our mind.”
That mandate also revealed the scale of the work ahead.
Like many districts, Appleton had years of key information published in formats that wouldn’t meet the new accessibility laws’ deadlines, and the clock was ticking.
“Having access to all of our pages in one view in Composer has saved us a huge amount of time... When it’s something that has to go on every site, (it) probably saves half a day of work.”
LYNN STREUBEL
APPLETON AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT
The Challenge
Important information was locked in inaccessible formats
“We had over 2,000 PDFs on our website,” Lynn explained, and a large portion of its most important information lived in PDFs, scanned documents, and other formats that were difficult for families to access.
Board policies were one major example.
“All of our board policies were in a PDF format,” Lynn said. “Some of them were scanned as images, so they weren’t even text-readable. We were trying to look at how we could remediate and remove those PDFs or transfer them into an accessible format.” The same issues kept appearing across the site, like when the course guides were shared through a service that made it hard for students and families to use.
“This was a Google Doc that somebody had made into an online format,” Lynn explained. “They used the free version of Flipbooks, so they weren't searchable or translatable, we couldn’t even copy and paste out of it — zero accessibility.”
Summer school information created similar challenges. Families had to download separate PDFs for each location just to review course options.
“It was a multi-page PDF with all of the information for that school,” Lynn said. “That’s all we gave them. If a family was looking for summer school courses at one of our schools, they would have to download the PDF for that particular location.”
For a district serving more than 15,000 students, this approach created compliance issues and barriers for families, not to mention complications for staff in maintaining information across multiple websites.
The Solution
Building a better experience with Composer, Posts, and accessibility tools
In a matter of weeks, Appleton moved from a static flyer-based model to a more accessible and scalable publishing process using Finalsite’s content management system, Composer. The team rethought how information could be brought into compliance and even reimagined how resources could be organized, displayed, and maintained over time.
Composer’s built-in accessibility tools, including an on-page Accessibility Checker and AI-powered alt text, helped the team identify issues like heading structure, missing alt text, and other accessibility concerns before publishing.
But rather than attempting to fix everything at once, Appleton focused on high-impact areas first.
The work started with board policies, which Lynn converted from PDFs into Posts using Finalsite’s web publishing module. That created searchable, structured content that could be organized with tags and displayed across multiple pages.
As pages were rebuilt, Composer’s Accessibility Checker flagged issues such as heading order and missing alt text, allowing them to be corrected before publishing. The team also used Composer’s alt text generator to quickly create image descriptions that support screen readers.
Next, the team tackled the course guides and, instead of leaving course information in a static file, rebuilt them as a searchable web experience using Posts, categories, and tags for better organization.
“We love the opportunity to make it more user-friendly,” Lynn said. “Some of our PDFs weren’t searchable, so if somebody was looking for a specific class, they could now search the high school course catalog.”
Post tags and categories also helped students and counselors find classes that met specific requirements and helped build schedules. “If students just wanted to see everything that was available for AP credit, we have an AP tag on it, so they can see all of our classes that we offer that are associated with AP,” Lynn said.
“The summer school course really was an opportunity to make it accessible,” Lynn added. “Not so much the searchability, but more just to make it accessible and make it translatable for families that would rather look at it in their native language.”
And for Appleton, language access is an idea that’s closely tied to accessibility.
“We have a high population of Hmong, Spanish, and now a growing population among our families is Swahili,” Lynn said. “So we were able to put that course catalog out there and let it be translated automatically through Weglot. That was important to us to get that in a format that was more accessible for families.”
Built-in tools supported accessibility and efficiency
Composer’s built-in accessibility tools became a valuable part of the district’s workflow. “I use Composer’s on-page accessibility features quite often,” Lynn said. “The Accessibility Checker in Composer is nice because it gives you a quick ‘catch-anything-before-you-publish-it kind of look.’”
Composer also helps streamline accessibility tasks like writing alt text for images. The platform’s AI-powered alt text allows the team to quickly create image descriptions that support screen readers and improve page accessibility without slowing down publishing.
With Title II accessibility deadlines approaching, the team made a fast pivot, and over time, accessibility became an even bigger part of the district’s regular publishing process.
“We’re more aware of it, so anytime we touch a page, we go through to make sure our headings are all in the proper order,” Lynn said.
Composer’s ability to reuse content across sites helped Appleton reduce duplicate work.
“We use Shared Elements a lot, which was actually one of the selling points of Finalsite,” Lynn said.
Previously, school websites linked families back to the district site and required them to download PDFs. Having access to all of our pages in one view in Composer has saved us a huge amount of time,” Lynn said, noting that the capability also helped the communications team distribute updates across the district’s 30+ websites in just a click or two.
“In our previous system, we would have to log into each site separately. Now, with Reuse Content, we’re able to reuse this whole page over on the school’s site. With the ability to use Posts and tags, now our communications coordinator can make one Post and enter all the tags,” Lynn said. “When it’s something that has to go on every site, she probably saves half a day of work.”
The Results
Better access for families and a more efficient workflow
Like any other district, Appleton’s accessibility work is ongoing, but the district has already built a stronger model for sharing information online. Families and students can now explore and access key content in formats that are easier to search, navigate, and translate directly on the website, rather than being buried deep inside PDFs.
“We’re just making a habit out of it,” Lynn said. “We’re documenting everything we do so that if we do have an OCR complaint, we can show that we’re making progress toward accessibility.”
For Appleton, accessibility has become more of a regular part of the district’s workflow, and less about reaching a finish line. “I would say it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Lynn said. “Take it one chunk at a time and keep building from that.”
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