HomeMy WebLinkAboutADA-Compliance-and-Accessibility-GuideSchool Website ADA ComplianceAccessibility Guide
School Website ADA Compliance Accessibility Guide
Table of contents:
Introduction…………………………………………..……..…..….…………… 1
Web accessibility and your school district….........………………. 2
For disabilities of all kinds…………..……………..………………...…… 2
When to begin……………………………………………………...….……….. 3
Common myths about accessibility……………………….…........… 4
Evaluating your website ………………………………………..….………. 5
Making and keeping it accessible.……...............……….…….……. 7
How to make your website ADA compliant.……………….……… 10
Glossary……………………………………………………………………..….….. 13
Related links and articles………...………………………………………... 14
About Campus Suite
ADA compliance is just one communications challenge
Campus Suite is helping schools solve. Our web platform
enables schools to manage their websites, notifications,
mobile apps and social media – all from one simple
command center. We love helping schools, and we love
sharing what we know through Campus Suite Academy
free resources such as this guide.
To learn more about how Campus Suite can help improve
your school communications, visit us at
www.campussuite.com
Introduction
Website accessibility has become a
priority communications challenge for
school districts across the country.
Good-looking, easy-to-navigate school
websites may appear plenty accessible
and user-friendly to most of us, but are
not to everyone. Just as your school
buildings and grounds are mandated by
law to be barrier free to everyone, your
school website is required to be fully
accessible.
Individuals with vision, hearing, physical
or learning disabilities need to be
accommodated so that they can access
web content. A significant chunk of your
students, parents, staff and school
community at large are being shut off
from your web communications unless
you’ve taken the necessary step to be
fully ADA compliant.
The ADA Compliance School Website Guide
is for those responsible for planning and
managing your school website to ensure
you meet the U.S. federal website
accessibility requirements. It’s designed
to make sure you're prepared to
understand all the considerations that go
into understanding and resolving the
issues that can affect your school’s
website compliance with ADA law.
This guide is published by Campus Suite
and is part of The Campus Suite
Academy’s commitment to ongoing
professional development for educators
in the realm of web communications.
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 1
Web accessibility and
your school district
Simply put, web accessibility means that
anyone with disabilities should be able to
perceive, comprehend, navigate and
interact with your website – students,
parents, staff, community members at
large. Web accessibility is important for it
provides equal access and opportunity
for everyone in your school community to
participate in the education experience.
It’s for your blind teacher, autistic
kindergartner, your hearing-impaired
high schooler. It’s for the learning-
disabled student, paraplegic parent, for
the ageing grandmother. Web
accessibility is for the one-in-five of the
U.S. population that suffers from one sort
of disability or another, and the four who
don’t. By identifying and knocking down
the communication barriers that exist on
your website, you can maximize the
delivery of content and interaction with
your entire school community, and help
meet your school’s mission.
For all disabilities of all
kinds
When thinking of website accessibility for
the disabled, most people think of blind
or deaf people and their ability to hear or
read what’s on your website. Screen
readers translate the written screen text
into audible language, while captioning
and online transcripts bring to life video
and multimedia content on the web. But
there’s more to website accessibility than
just satisfying your vision- and
hearing-impaired users.
Not everyone has the physical ability to
handle a mouse, for example, or even
hunt-and-peck simple keyboard
navigation. Rotating banners may move
much too quickly for a learning disabled
user to view, much less comprehend. Do
all your users have the ability to fill out
the forms you’ve embedded into your
pages?
Disabilities come in all shapes and sizes,
and your website needs to accommodate
them all and eliminate the obstacles that
exclude these individuals from accessing
your site.
Assistive Technology
A wide range of hardware and
software is available to the disabled
to help them access the web. Screen
readers (e.g. JAWS, NVDA ),
magnification and speech input
software, and input alternatives such
as head pointers, motion,
eye-tracking and single-switch entry
devices help people access the web.
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 2
Four major categories of
disabilitie s:
Visual
Blind, low-vision, color blindness
Variations in type fonts and sizes, color
schemes, images, contrasts and other
visual elements to convey messages are
lost on the visually impaired.
Hearing
Partial, or total hearing impairment
The increasing use of video, audio,
slideware, and multimedia on websites
doesn’t register with someone suffering
from hearing loss.
Motor
Impairments to any physical movement
The wide range of congenital conditions
and even temporary mobility
impairments may preclude users from
using a mouse or keyboard.
Cognitive
Learning disorders
Problem-solving, memory, ADD, Down’s,
traumatic brain injuries and other
learning disorders each present unique
corresponding web access challenges.
When examining your school’s website
accessibility, you must take into account
the entire spectrum of disabilities.
When to begin
The degree of urgency surrounding
school website ADA compliance is
starting to heat up. Many schools know
they need to make their sites compliant,
but either are not taking the steps to do
so, or not sure where to turn. What is is
certain, is that public schools are subject
to Sections 504 and 508 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973 ; that is,
schools are legally obligated to make
their website content accessible to all.
Since 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice
has been hammering out the specific
regulations details, but it’s recently been
made official that it will adopt the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
established by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C). Schools in Arizona,
North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and
Washington state are among those
currently in litigation over complaints
filed with the Office of Civil Rights alleging
their websites do not comply with these
guidelines. With more claims are sure to
follow, school districts face stiff fines and
terrible public relations fallout from not
addressing this sensitive issue.
A recent Campus Suite Academy poll of
school communicators showed that 50%
didn’t know if their website is ADA
compliant, and another 25% know it’s
not. Factor in too that 20 percent of the
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 3
U.S. population has a disability , and these
alarming numbers are why many school
administrators are scrambling to
understand what it takes to bring their
websites into compliance.
Regardless whether your district comes
under direct legal pressure to comply
with web accessibility, it’s both right thing
and the legal thing to begin assessing
your school website’s ADA compliance
issue now, and begin resolving them.
Common myths about
accessibility
Concerns about web accessibility are
nothing new. Likewise, so-called
remedies for a website’s accessibility
shortcomings are neither new nor
comprehensive.
Myth #1
Just use plain text: avoid the bells and
whistles.
A text-only website is not the answer.
Video, audio and multimedia should and
can be displayed on your website, if it’s
designed and developed correctly. The
goal of web accessibility is not to alter
content to fit the ADA requirements, but
broaden the reach of content using the
right tools.
Myth #2
Just add ALT tags to my images.
An alt tag, which is when you include a
clear text description to accompany the
image, enables screen readers to
translate the image into text. While
certainly recommended, alt tags address
only a sliver of the full ADA-compliance
challenge, for the non-blind disabled still
face obstacles.
Myth #3
Youtube video links are good to go.
Let’s just say all your home grown videos
do comply with ADA guidelines. What
about the ones linked to those not
hosted by your school? The automatic
captioning third-party hosting services
like Youtube and Vimeo probably don’t
pass muster.
Myth #4
Compliance is not a priority of federal
agencies.
All you need to to do is check the U.S.
Dept. of Education website, where there’s
a dedicated web page: “ How to File a
Discrimination Complaint with the Office of
Civil Rights .” Across the country,
notification letters from disability
advocates are being written and lawsuits
have begun.
There is no quick fix when it comes to
making your school website fully ADA
compliant for all your users. When taking
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 4
into account all the users that span the
range of disabilities, and a legacy of
creating content with no or little regard to
their special requirements, years of
website content cannot be remedied
simply with alt tags and screen readers.
Evaluating your website
You need to first understand just where
and what about your website is
non-compliant. Most schools’ websites,
for example, are loaded with PDFs that
are not compliant; images that aren’t
adequately described or searchable; not
enough visual contrast on pages; videos
without closed-captioning.
You may have had an occasional
complaint about your website’s
accessibility and solved it with some
workaround, but that’s no solution. You
need a strategic approach through a
thorough examination of all its content; a
continuous vigilance using the right tools
on your website’s compliance; and the
knowledge and resources to manage the
process.
1. Be strategic.
In order for you website to be fully
website accessible, you first need a shift
in philosophy by school administration to
embrace the obligation to serve every
student, parent, staff and community
member. As you begin the audit of your
existing school website(s) , brace
yourself for what’s likely to be a minefield
of compliance issues. When you consider
that each and every menu, page, link,
image, video, pdf, slide show and other
component that comprises your site will
need attention, the prospect of
compliance may seem daunting.
2. Use the right tools.
There are host of compliance evaluation
tools available to check specific
components of a typical web page. The
W3C has a list of these ADA compliance
checkers here. These tools help you
examine the parts of a website that are
most likely to be out of compliance:
●Page title
●Images
●Headings
●Menus
●Contrast ratio
●Text re-sizing flexibility
●Keyboard access andi visual focus
●Forms, labels and error interaction
●Multimedia
●Basic structure
One huge beneficial outgrowth of
focusing on web accessibility for people
with disabilities, is that web content is
becoming more usable even to those
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 5
without disabilities. Web accessibility is
consistent with the design principles that
make for good design. In just about every
case, adaptations benefit nearly
everyone. Well-organized content, logical
navigation, captions and other features
are welcomed by all. Transcripts, for
example, of audio or video files, benefit
not only the hearing impaired, for whom
these accommodations are required.
3. Tap the knowledge and
resources.
Another important way to gauge a
website’s compliance is the human
element. People themselves are great
resources to use to check your site’s
accessibility score.
Ask someone who is actually disabled to
take a page for a ‘test drive’ and check
pages or page elements. In addition to
applying what you know about the issues
that put a site out of compliance, people
most affected by accessibility are usually
more than willing to point out issues and
help bring your site into compliance.
Few if any schools will have the in-house
resources to tackle converting your
website into full ADA compliance.
Whether you’re fixing an existing website
or starting anew, it’s critical that you
build in the website accessibility
requirement specifications. Your web
development team and suppliers should
have a solid understanding of
accessibility and have the technical chops
to satisfy your requirements.
The content management system (CMS)
you choose will have a dramatic impact
on how smoothly the process will be.
Seek a CMS provider that is versed in
understanding the complexities of
identifying and resolving ADA compliance
issues, and can help you build a website
that serves everyone.
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 6
Making and keeping it
accessible
Implementing a web accessible site in
your district requires a plan that includes
training and testing. As we addressed
earlier in this guide, your school needs to
take a strategic approach by first
embracing a philosophy of accessibility.
Top-level administrative support and
instilling a culture of accommodating the
disabled is at the heart of a successful
program.
Planning
An overarching goal of your planning
should be to treat web accessibility as a
part of proper web design, and not apart
from it. Don’t view it as an additional or
supplemental consideration, rather as
part of the fabric of your website.
Providing your district has the full
support of its school board and
superintendent, assembling a web
accessibility team is your next step.
Comprised of senior communications
and IT staff, your team should also
include representation from key content
contributors who can share the technical
direction required to create content
properly and fix the problems when they
occur.
Training
Training should encompass all individuals
who contribute to your website. These
would include in-house technical staff,
content authors and contributors, and
any outside design and CMS contractors
that need to be up to speed on fulfilling
the web accessibility mission.
Your training should include an overview
that helps everyone understand the
perspectives of users with disabilities. Be
sure to include the ethical and legal
obligations of your school district to
Fixing compliance problems
When a formal complaint is lodged about
a school’s website’s accessibility, it
typically comes from the U.S.
Department of Education Office of Civil
Rights. Often prompted by a notification
letter from a disability advocate, these
complaints usually give the school 90
days to either comply or offer a plan to
comply, or else face fines or other legal
action.
comply with these standards. From a
technical standpoint, your appropriate IT
staff and outside web vendors must be
well-versed and will likely require training
on specific design, coding and multimedia
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 7
considerations of your site. Your content
contributors may not need to know code,
but they nonetheless need to know the
technical boundaries of the content
they’re creating.
WebAIM, an organization dedicated to
making the web more useful for the
disabled, has a wealth of training and
support information to share, including a
model for an implementation plan you
could use in your district .
Testing
Once your web team knows the
standards that need to be met, keeping
your site accessible requires a vigilance
using the right tools and the right people.
There are a host of accessibility checkers
and validators available. These software
plug-ins determine if your web pages and
content meet 508 compliance. Some are
free, some are more comprehensive than
others. Use a program gives you the
reports and level of detail you need.
Just as important, if not more so, than
any software to monitor your site is
using real, live people . As web
accessibility expert Keith David Reeves
points out, “Nothing beats the human
element when it comes to testing your
site.” When a problem arises, bring it to
the attention of the web administration
so it can resolve the issue and avoid
similar ones going forward.
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How to make your website ADA compliant
Most of the problems that occur on a school website fall in one or several of the following
categories. Check out this resource from the WebAIM group for a WCAG 2.0 Checklist .
Contrast and colors
Some people have can’t pick up contrasts, and some are color
blind, so there needs to be a distinguishable contrast between text
and background colors. This goes for buttons, links, text on images
– everything. Consideration to contrast and color choice is also
important for extreme lighting conditions.
Contract checker: http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker
Using semantics to format your HTML pages
When web page codes are clearly described in easy-to-understand
terms, it enables broader sharing across all browsers and apps.
This ‘friendlier’ language not only helps all the users, but
developers who are striving to make content more universal on
more devices .
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/semanticstructure
Text alternatives for non-text content
Written replacements for images, audio and video should provide
all the same descriptors that the non-text content conveys.
Besides helping with searching, clear, concise word choice can
make vivid non-text content for the disabled.
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 9
Ability to navigate with the keyboard
Not everyone can use a mouse. Blind people with many with
motor disabilities have to use a keyboard to make their way
around a website. Users need to be able to interact fully with your
website by navigating using the tab, arrows and return keys only. A
“skip navigation” option is also required. Consider using WAI-ARIA
for improved accessibility, and properly highlight the links as you
use the tab key to make sections.
Helpful article: www.nngroup.com/articles/keyboard-accessibility
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/skipnav
Easy to navigate and find information
Finding relevant content via search and easy navigation is a
universal need. Alt text, heading structure, page titles, descriptive
link text (no ‘click here’ please) are just some ways to help
everyone find what they’re searching for. You must also provide
multiple ways to navigate such as a search and a site map.
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/sitetools/
Properly formatting tables
Tables are hard for screen readers to decipher. Users need to be
able to navigate through a table one cell at a time. In addition to
the table itself needing a caption, row and column headers need to
be labeled and data correctly associated with the right header.
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/data
Making PDFs accessible
PDF files must be tagged properly to be accessible, and
unfortunately many are not. Images and other non-text elements
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 10
within that PDF also need to be ADA-compliant. Creating anew is
one thing; converting old PDFs takes time.
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/acrobat
Making videos accessible
Simply adding a transcript isn’t enough. Videos require closed
captioning and detailed descriptions (e.g., who’s on screen, where
they are, what they’re doing, even facial expressions) to be fully
accessible and ADA compliant.
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/captions
Making forms accessible
Forms are common tools for gathering info and interacting. From
logging in to registration, they can be challenging if not designed to
be web accessible. How it’s laid out, use of labels, size of clickable
areas and other aspects need to be considered.
Helpful article: http://webaim.org/techniques/forms
Alternate versions
Attempts to be fully accessible sometimes fall short, and in those
cases, alternate versions of key pages must be created. That is, it is
sometimes not feasible (legally, technically) to modify some
content. These are the ‘exceptions’, but still must be
accommodated.
Feedback for users
To be fully interactive, your site needs to be able to provide and
easy way for users to submit feedback of any website issues.
Clarity is key for both any confirmation or error feedback that
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 11
occurs while engaging the page.
Other related requirements
No flashing
Blinking and flashing are not only bothersome, but can be
disorienting and even dangerous for many users. Seizures can
even be triggered by flashing, so avoid using any flashing or
flickering content.
Timers
Timed connections can create difficulties for the disabled. They
may not even know a timer is in effect, it may create stress. In
some cases (e.g., purchasing items), a timer is required, but for
most school content, avoid using them.
Fly-out menus
Menus that fly out or down when an item is clicked are helpful to
dig deeper into site’s content, but they need to be available via
keyboard navigation, and not immediately snap back when those
using a mouse move from the clickable area.
No pop-ups
Pop-up windows present a range of obstacles for many disabled
users, so it’s best to avoid using them altogether. If you must, be
sure to alert the user that a pop is about to be launched.
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 12
Glossary
Assistive technology Hardware and software for disabled
people that enable them to perform tasks
they otherwise would not be able to
perform (e..g., a screen reader)
WCAG 2.0 Evolving web design guidelines established
by the W3C that specify how to
accommodate web access for the disabled
504 Section of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
that protects civil liberties and guarantees
certain rights of disabled people
508 An amendment to the Rehabilitation Act
that eliminates barriers in information
technology for the disabled
ADA
Screen reader Software technology that transforms
on-screen text into audible voice. Includes
tools for navigating and accessing web
pages.
Website accessibility Making your website fully accessible for
people of all abilities
Keyboard trap Using the keyboard to navigate to a
feature, then being unable (trapped) to
navigate away from a website feature
W3C World Wide Web Consortium – the
international body that develops
standards for using the web
OCR Department of Education, Office of Civil
Rights – the office that files discrimination
complaints
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 13
Related links and articles
Understanding Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
http://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/what-is-section-504/
WCAG 2.0 Guidelines Overview
http://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist
Quick Reference: Web Accessibility Principles
http://webaim.org/resources/quickref/quickref.pdf
Intro to Web Accessibility
https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
Web Accessibility Implementation Plan from WebAIM
http://webaim.org/articles/implementation/plan
Monitoring your Web Accessibility Program
http://webaim.org/articles/implementation/plan#monitoring
Website Accessibility Checkers and Validators
https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools
Public Schools Need to Audit their Website
http://www.3playmedia.com/2016/05/27/why-public-schools-need-to-audit-their-website-for-acces
sibility-right-now/
Accessibility complaints on the rise
https://www.audioeye.com/school-ada-website-accessibility-complaints-on-the-rise/
Legal Update on School District Website Accessibility from Texas School Board Assoc.
http://bit.ly/2ghVP46
HTML Semantics Guide
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp
Campus Suite ADA Compliance School Website Guide 14