Crackdowns continue on schools whose websites are not fully accessible. As the U.S. Department of Justice and DOE’s Office for Civil Rights reach settlements with school districts and private advocacy groups, your first defense and first step to making your website ADA-compliant is to conduct a school website accessibility audit.
But where do you start? How do you go about conducting an audit that will do more than show good faith that your district is doing all it can meet the web needs of those with disabilities?
There are many web accessibility specialists offering their services to corporations, government agencies and large universities, but those options may not be in the budget for many school districts. The following is more a do-it-yourself option that will get you started on better understanding your website's shortfalls and taking the right steps to make them compliant.
An audit accomplishes two major goals. First off, it gives you a full understanding of where your school or district websites stand when it comes to accessibility. You’ll be surprised, if not shocked, how many barriers exist. Secondly, it demonstrates to the government and disabilities advocacy groups that you’re taking the steps to become compliant. This is an important consideration in 'buying time' to meet rectify your website to meet federal regulations.
Chances are, you’re already familiar with the need to bring your school website up to speed with federal regulations. And while the regulations are not technically final, all indications point to WCAG 2.0 as the accessibility standard that schools must follow to make their website ADA compliant.
WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) have already been adopted as the standard to follow for federal government websites. Public websites are next in line. Some say, as suggested in this recent article in the National Law Review, this became official in 2018.
One of the first things the OCR will ask for during an investigation is an audit so you can get a full understanding of how and where your site falls short. The key point here is, it’s not too early – in fact, it’s kind of late for those schools already responding to OCR complaints – to conduct a website accessibility audit.
The audit step is very educational in and of itself, for in the process you’ll get a better idea of the requirements for website accessibility. Once your audit’s complete, how do you go about making – and keeping – your school website accessible for all?
An audit is not a one-time exercise. Keeping a website accessible requires vigilance, so you should really be auditing your site on a regular basis if not continually.
There are two major steps to conducting an audit: one requires online tools. The second step requires the personal touch.
A web accessibility checker is software that scans each page on your website and flags your accessibility problem areas. Most of these tools – some of which are even do-it-yourself – will create a general report that covers common issues such as:
In some cases, all you need to do is plug in the URL to a form and the checker will take it from there.
There are many third-party companies (e.g., Siteimprove, Monsido, SortSite, PowerMapper) that perform accessibility evaluations, and know that the level of service and associated costs vary greatly. WebAIM (web accessibility in mind), as well, is a non-profit that performs audits. Our company, SchoolNow, conducts accessibility audits just for schools.
The online tools go only so far though. Checking every website page for issues of varying degrees of seriousness requires the human experience. Such issues that escape detection by the software might include having confusing alt descriptions or hard-to-view color combinations.
Let’s look at some of the things you should be on the lookout for when conducting a “human review” of each page.
To do an audit right, you’re going to need help, but be aware that web accessibility services run the gamut. After conducting the audit, you should document your findings. List out all of the areas and errors, including all WCAG violations, outline and prioritize recommendations to resolve the issues you’ve discovered. Audits are one thing; you need to establish a plan of resolution.
Now comes the hard part – making the fixes. It’s important you understand how to become ADA compliant so you can have a website that’s accessible to your entire school community. What’s more, you need to know how to keep it compliant going forward. That’s another story (and probably another article).
Consider reviewing your CMS provider’s technology to their knowledge and capabilities when it comes to ADA compliance and web accessibility. It may be easier to create a new website with a provider that is capable of streamlining the management of ADA compliance.
Have you audited your website for accessibility and ADA compliance?