The following questions were posed during a recent SchoolNow Academy webinar on web accessibility that was presented by Jared Smith, the Associate Director of WebAIM. WebAIM is the Web Accessibility in Mind project at the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University. To view a recorded version of Jared's webinar, go here.
The WebAIM.org web site has a wealth of information to help you learn more about implementing and evaluating web site accessibility.
Website accessibility and ADA compliance for school districts is an especially important topic, as school administrators seek to do not only the right thing, but the legal thing. Disability advocacy groups across the country have filed complaints with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights OCR asking school districts to comply with the law.
The OCR resolution agreements vary, but the task facing many school districts is to get their websites accessible. How to go about making school website accessible can be a daunting process that is ongoing.
Here are the questions and answers we did not have time to get to during the SchoolNow Academy webinar:
JS: Screen readers generally have access to embedded content, so this may be an issue with your usage of the screen reader, or it may suggest significant accessibility issues with this content. I’ve not experienced such issues with this type of content, so it likely is something on your end.
JS: Yes, there are no inherent issues with using iframes. The iframe content will be read as part of the page that contains it. If the iframe presents a distinct block of content, such as an advertisement or a video player, then you can give the <iframe> element a title attribute value that describes the content. More details are available at: https://webaim.org/techniques/frames/#iframe
JS: WCAG functions independent of the nature of the site. It is simply a way to measure accessibility of any web site. Legal or contractual requirements may vary based on the content or nature of the site, and some may require WCAG conformance, but WCAG itself does not define a scope for applicability.
JS: HTML documents support a much higher level of accessibility and are generally much easier to make accessible and to provide to users than PDF documents, but PDF documents can be made highly accessible. More details are available at: https://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/
JS: There are two key words to remember - Content and Function. You want to present the core content of the image and, if it is clickable, what the function is. You do not want to describe what a picture looks like. One question that can be helpful when considering proper alternative text is “If I could not use this image, what text would I put in its place?”. For a headshot image, typically the person’s name is sufficient for alternative text.
JS: Section 508 applies to “Electronic and Information Technology”, so this certainly covers mobile apps. The ADA has yet to define technical standards for such things (including web content), but several complaints and lawsuits have suggested that inaccessible apps are considered discriminatory under ADA.
JS: Vimeo has historically had poorer support for accessibility of their player and support for captions than YouTube, though Vimeo does currently support good accessibility for such things, though not to the same level as YouTube.
JS: I can’t speak definitively to the legal requirements except to note that discrimination laws clearly apply to such entities. Public entities have clearer requirements, particularly because they receive federal funding, but I do not believe that charter or private schools are exempt.
JS: Social media is often a primary mechanism for communication and information dissemination for schools. Even though schools cannot control the accessibility of such platforms, this does not mean that they are exempt from needing to ensure that content delivered via these platforms be accessible.
JS: WebAIM can help you navigate the website compliance process.
Yes, both the slides and video presentation can be found here.
JS: Yes, at least partially. The YouTube video player has acceptable accessibility, however the video author is still responsible to provide captions for the media.
JS: We do provide the free WAVE accessibility testing accessibility service - https://wave.webaim.org/ This tool focuses on accessibility and does not test broken links, spelling, etc.
JS: Transcripts are only relevant to video and audio content. Users with disabilities can read text content from other portions of the site.
Thanks again to Jared Smith, Associate Director of the WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) project at the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University, for leading this informative webinar.