Below are a list of some of the most common ways that school websites fail to meet compliance even when trying. Beware these common "gotchas" - they can leave a district out of compliance even when the district thinks that the website is fully accessible.
A very large number of Montana school districts have published a variation of a footer on their website stating that their website conforms to the WCAG2.0aa guidelines and/or with ARIA styles when, in fact, it does not. This is a very common practice and generates a false sense of security for the board and administration.
Sometimes websites put critical information into the footer or other parts of their website in small font. This act, by itself, does not render a site inaccessible. However, often website creators will use specific HTML tags to prohibit the smaller font from scaling properly.
Make sure that all of your text will scale properly with the browser’s built-in magnify functions. If it will not scale to a legible font size, it is not accessible, and it renders your website out-of-compliance.
Websites must be fully navigable via the keyboard. If a website requires a mouse for navigation, it is not ADA compliant.
As we know from the RANCH Rules, N is for Navigation. Operability is a fundamental principle of accessibility. This is also backed up by WCAG2.0aa Guideline 2.1.1 . Websites must be fully navigable via keyboard input.
Many Javascript navigation menus do not allow for keyboard navigation. Some school website hosting companies are not compliant in this aspect.
Often, ARIA non-compliance is not exposed by the WAVE test. A website can completely pass the WAVE test and still not comply with navigation requirements.
Websites that successfully pass the WAVE test but are not fully navigable via the keyboard are not ADA accessible.
The following video demonstrates an ADA-compliant navigation menu as well as a non-conforming menu. At the time of publication, the following websites were used for demonstration:
It is quite common for websites to provide information via graphics. Announcements for sporting events, dances, PTA meetings and other notifications are often done as graphics. These graphics are designed either as a simple way to provide the information or as one that is more visually appealing.
Displaying information in this way is problematic for multiple reasons:
If you do use images with text, make sure that they scale, have good contrast and have good ALT tags describing the content. It is simplest and generally more accessible to avoid using images to convey large amounts of text information.
As we know from the RANCH rules, H is for Helper. The documents attached to a district's website must fully comply with all of the principles of accessibility.
Many PDFs fail the compliance tests in multiple ways. There are several considerations for making a PDF fully accessible. The largest and simplest is:
If a PDF is created by scanning paper to a PDF, it is almost certainly NOT screen reader compatible.
If a PDF is screen reader compatible, it must still meet the other principles of accessibility. Our RANCH rules say that PDFs must be:
As you can see, it is not easy to make PDFs fully ADA compliant. Watch out for things like board minutes or other documents that may have been traditionally scanned from paper copies. Instead, save these to PDF from the original Word or Google Docs digital formats to guarantee better accessible PDFs.
To really take your PDF accessibility to the highest level, check out this guide from Adobe on creating and verifying accessible PDFs with Acrobat Pro.
When providing videos (either those prepared by the district or those sourced from a third party), the video MUST contain closed captioning to meet WCAG2.0aa compliance. Providing a transcript or other alternative text-based transcript is not adequate for meeting WCAG2.0aa compliance.
To provide closed captioning in a school’s created video, you might want to consider YouTube’s closed captioning system to allow you to easily add closed captions to videos.
Make sure that if you provide a slideshow, you are including either Closed Captioning or appropriate ALT tagging. Note that slideshows that are HTML5 are subject to ARIA standards as a rich element.