Here are answers to common questions about ADA and the SchoolStatus offering.
What is the SchoolStatus Sites ADA Service Plan and what ADA issues does it fix?
SchoolStatus Sites uses the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ("WCAG 2.2") guidelines to address the requirements needed by the most common assistive technology readers. For the non-technical, it can be a daunting task. With our service plan, we will scan your site monthly when school is in session, and quarterly when it is out of session to find and fix basic ADA content violations. We also include up to 60 minutes of video transcription per year. . Even without a contract, our support team will help you, over time, to identify and address ADA violations on your website.
What are the expectations of an ADA compliant website?
Currently, the Office of Civil Rights ("OCR") is asking schools/districts the following about their website as a minimum:
- Can you navigate through your site by using just the tab and arrow keys?
- When navigating with the tab key, does the selection change color to assist visually impaired people?
- Do your colors offer enough contrast to be seen by those who are visually impaired?
- Do you have alt tags – very descriptive ones – for every image on your site?
- Do you have transcripts and closed-captioning for videos? Even if on YouTube?
- Are all linked PDF files tagged and optimized for ADA?
These are only some of the questions covering the most common school website content. We’ll do our best to help you understand and address ADA issues whether or not you purchase our ADA Service plan. The plan just gets you more proactive services like monthly or quarterly scans and a report showing non-compliant content.
Are we as a school going to be fined if a form (for example) doesn't meet their requirements?
It is possible. The OCR is looking for schools/district that have a proactive plan in place to achieve and maintain compliance. Those that do not, are more likely to have an OCR complaint filed against them, have a site-audit performed, and depending on the results of the audit, given a very short time to make the required changes or be subject to fines and/or lawsuits.
Who's responsible for knowing all of this and making sure we are compliant?
Legal responsibility falls on to the school/district. SchoolStatus is here to help empower you.
Is ADA a requirement of each state?
We believe OCR is regionalized and works with a state's DOE, but this is new for everyone and we are learning more each day ourselves. The guidelines originate from the government, enforcement (in the form of filing complaints), and are done by both governmental organizations and private citizens (see private citizen's example ).
SchoolStatus Sites is proactively addressing ADA Compliance with our current and future customers.