META's Simplified Accessibility Compliance Rules. Actually, more like guidelines...
The RANCH rules are a simplified set of tests to help determine if a website is accessible. They try to answer the most fundamental question:
How Do I Get My Website Accessibility-Compliant?
This is a big question. META has taken an approach that will make sense to both technical and non-technical audiences alike. For the technology staff responsible for meeting accessibility, META also provides more technical information in the WCAG2.0aa and ARIA sections of this website.
Understanding the RANCH test
META has designed a simple accessibility test to help districts quickly and easily “gut check” their websites and determine if they meet the spirit of ADA guidelines.
We call it the RANCH rules. While the RANCH rules attempt to follow WCAG2.0aa guidelines and WAI-ARIA style recommendations, the RANCH rules can be applied without a full understanding of WCAG2.0aa and ARIA to get a gut-feel for accessibility.
If you only take one thing away from this website, let it be the RANCH rules.
The RANCH rules are a five-part test:
We’ll take them one-by-one.
There are two fundamental concerns regarding readability.
The first is font clarity and scaling. For website visitors with low vision, a small or highly-decorative font can be challenging. Websites should use clear fonts that scale to larger sizes with the browser’s built in magnification functions. Having a “large font” option on your website can be helpful but is not required if the fonts scale appropriately.
The second is screen reader compatibility. Your website’s information should be generally consumable for people using a screen reader. Blind or very-low vision website visitors use these tools to navigate the web. Alt tags should be used on every image to convey the meaning behind the image, and images should not be used to convey what is largely text-based in nature.
Architecture is an overarching concern regarding the structure of your pages.
Web pages must be configured logically so visitors using a screen reader can logically navigate the page. Beyond logical hierarchy, web pages should use Heading tags to highlight topical sections of the website.
Your website must be navigable by people of all abilities. Some website visitors may not possess the ability to use a mouse for navigation. All pages should be navigable by keyboard navigation. This includes menu navigation.
If you have Javascript drop-down menus, these menus must support keyboard navigation OR an alternative keyboard-navigable menu must be available on the screen.
Your website must have appropriate contrast in a variety of ways.
The website should use a font color over a background providing adequate contrast for easy legibility. Links should be clearly differentiated from non-hyperlinked text to clearly identify navigation points. Visited links should be easily differentiated from non-visited links. And menus that change color with a “mouse over” should also be identifiable when using keyboard navigation. Images and logos that contain text must also have adequate contrast to ensure legibility.
Use the WAVE tool or another color contrast checker to see what contrast issues you may have. Remember, images must meet contrast concerns as well.
Your district website almost certainly houses a multitude of supporting documents, videos, graphics, PDFs and other “helpers”. These Helpers must all be generally accessible via ADA guidelines.
Each type of Helper must comply with all of the other aspects of RANCH (Readability, Architecture, Navigation and Contrast). For different types of Helpers, this will mean different things. Let’s review a few examples: