Online learning today provides opportunities for learning lessons from home which is similar to classroom learning. On the other hand, schools that have a website should make sure that it meets ADA compliance. Moreover, web developers and designers should know what ADA is when creating a website for schools. ADA-compliant school websites should present equal access to students with disabilities as those who are not disabled. Apart from this, the content on the websites should meet WCAG 2.1 standards which are readable by disabled students.
How to achieve ADA compliance for a school website?
- Web accessibility testing
The first step to achieving ADA compliance for a school website is accessibility testing. It should include both manual and automated web accessibility testing. The accessibility testing should also include disabled users to perform education training. ADA compliance testing is an important step to knowing the reasons why someone would visit a school website including some important aspects.
They involve class registration, tuition payments, course details, syllabus, handbook viewing, access to contact details of teachers or administration, transcript requests, etc. It is wise to evaluate some examples of ADA- compliant school websites with more attention that help gain more ideas. Schools that provide them or any other content in PDF form should also make sure that it is accessible.
- Self-auditing
Self-auditing is another way to achieve ADA compliance for a website. At the same time, schools should check whether they follow the three 3 important checks such as keyboard navigation, color contrast, and alternative text. Testing keyboard navigation allows a school to understand the barriers in detail.
An ADA-compliant school website should make sure that all active elements receive keyboard focus. This, in turn, gives ways for users to determine where their focus is and helps them interact with a website with ease. Color contrast refers to testing the color in all states and making sure that all the content meets the minimum ratio for normal and large texts.
- Professional auditing
Professional auditing is usually done by a web development company, IT department, or others that specialize in ADA compliance testing while creating a website. A professional audit will help to know more about the summary of all major issues, guidelines to fix, options to confirm the accuracy of repairs, and follow-up meetings.
Tips to design an ADA-compliant school website
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- Schools should consider establishing a policy that meets all the requirements
- After establishing a policy, a school should ensure that the current system can accommodate those updates
- Auditing a website will help know the errors that provide a way to fix them as soon as possible and several tools are available for this purpose
- A school should create a plan for developing a website with high accuracy
- The website should contain a feedback section to make it easy for visitors to provide any feedback or recommendation
- Monitoring a website allows a school to know the performance and other things
- A school should consider staying close to the disability groups to update the new improvements on the website
More info about the ADA
People with disabilities are protected from discrimination by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA protects people with disabilities in many aspects of public life, including voting, parking, and many other areas.
