Maintaining School Website Accessibility for the Long Run
Many schools and districts have invested considerable resources into improving the accessibility of their websites. One thing to consider: this isn’t a one-time project, but an ongoing practice. Once your site is accessible (if you can get it there), how do you make sure it stays that way?
School website accessibility is a never-ending task. To make sure your website stays accessible for the long run, you need the right tools—and plenty of support.
The Ongoing Challenge of School Website Accessibility
The problem with website accessibility is that a website is never static. Webmasters and individual content creators are constantly updating the site with news and announcements, slide shows, and new programs and policies. If this new content is not created with accessibility best practices in mind, even the most accessible school website will gradually become less accessible over time.
This is why many schools and districts actually see accessibility scores decline as the school year progresses, even with the best of intentions. There are simply too many individual content creators adding too much new content for webmasters to keep up with. Over time, even schools who start out with excellent website accessibility scores will experience “accessibility entropy” as untrained content creators add new content to the site.
The majority of new website accessibility issues arise because content creators are simply not aware of best practices such as adding alt-text to images, avoiding the use of non-accessible PDFs, or adding close captioning to video content. To keep a website accessible over time, all content creators must be aware of the guidelines and follow them consistently.
Fighting “Accessibility Entropy” for School Websites
Creating and maintaining an accessible school website isn’t an easy task. Schools and districts need to make a long-term commitment to fight accessibility entropy and ensure that all new content meets ADA and Section 508 requirements for school website accessibility.
eChalk has designed our platform and services to help schools fight accessibility entropy. We provide three different kinds of support to help schools and districts create an accessible school website and maintain it over time.
A platform with accessibility built in. The eChalk CMS handles platform accessibility issues (such as ARIA tagging and keyboard focus) automatically, so webmasters only need to worry about content accessibility issues.
A built-in tool for content accessibility. eChalk GUIDE pinpoints content accessibility errors on the page and shows you where you need to go in the CMS to fix them. It’s available for all content creators, so it actually instills web accessibility best practices for everyone over time.
Ongoing expert support for website accessibility. We have website accessibility experts on staff who can help you interpret your reports AND show you how to fix accessibility problems within the eChalk CMS. We can provide training for school webmasters and staff so everyone understands the fundamentals of WCAG 2.0, the responsibilities of content creators, and how to use the eChalk accessibility tools.
When it comes to website accessibility, you don’t want to be left hanging. Choose a CMS provider who will be with you for the long run with the support you need.