So much of life is online these days that federal accessibility laws now apply to digital content provided by governmental organizations — such as Indian Prairie School District 204.
The district has reviewed its website, social media, online forms and email newsletters to meet a deadline this April for initial compliance.
Now administrators, led by the district’s communications department, are continuing work toward enhanced digital accessibility to meet another deadline set for April 2027.
Access for all an ‘ethical priority’
Lisa Barry, the district’s executive director of communication services, called digital access for all an important “regulatory and ethical priority” when discussing it with school board members at their meeting this week.
“Digital accessibility means ensuring that people of all abilities have equal, proactive access to our digital content — without having to ask for accommodations,” Barry said. This includes people with visual, hearing, cognitive, motor skill-related or other disabilities.
Striving for accessibility involves taking actions such as providing “alt text,” or written descriptions of images, to assist screen readers for people who are blind, and clearly labeling tables and headings so screen readers can navigate content.
Barry showed a video demonstrating how a screen reader parses through a webpage — and how inaccessible content can make navigation much trickier.
Goal: ‘maximum accessibility whenever possible’
To work toward the next deadline for increased digital accessibility, Barry said the district has created an official digital accessibility committee with representation from every district department, administrators at all school levels and a vision and hearing representative.
The district follows accessibility principles developed by the World Wide Web Consortium as part of the organization’s web content accessibility guidelines. The standards aim for web content that is perceivable by more ways than just color; operable, without pop-ups in the way; understandable, without unexplained website errors; and robust.
Exempted from the new federal accessibility standards are preexisting social media content, password-protected documents, former webpages clearly marked as “archived” and anything else that would create an undue burden to retrofit into an accessible form.
“Our goal remains maximum accessibility whenever possible,” Barry said.
Accessible content guides now available
School board member Mark Rising asked whether the accessibility improvements have come with a heavy cost in time, funding or workload for district staff, given that the federal government has not provided any funding to help districts meet the new standards.
Barry said the major time spend has come from meetings of the digital accessibility committee, but otherwise, staff members are able to fit the changes into their workflow. She said the committee has developed several style guides with tips for accessibility of future content and created guides on color contrast and font use, presentation templates and web templates for clubs and activities.
Ensuring the accessibility of information conveyed online “shows the direct impact our communications department and all digital content creators have on the experience of our community,” Barry said.
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