Does My School Website Meet Accessibility Regulations?
This is an important question that is often overlooked by some schools. However, you may actually be breaking the law if your school website does not meet accessibility requirements.
Common problems include:
- websites that are not easy to use on a mobile or cannot be navigated using a keyboard
- inaccessible PDF forms that cannot be read by screen readers
- poor colour contrast that makes text difficult to read - especially for visually impaired people.
New regulations mean that public sector organisations have a legal duty to make their websites and mobile apps accessible by making them perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 became UK law in September 2018 and aim to make online public services accessible for everyone, including those with disabilities.
There is a partial exemption for schools and nurseries. However, they must make sure that the content of their websites or apps relating to essential online administrative functions is made accessible. ‘Essential online content’ has not been legally defined, but could include content that the public (i.e. pupils and parents) need to use to access school/nursery services.
Schools-Online websites are fully optimised for viewing on desktop or mobile devices. In addition, schools are prompted to enter Alt Text for images. Alt Text is the text that describes images and can be read by screen readers to someone who may be visually impaired. Don't worry if you haven't yet got round to adding Alt Text, as our editor makes this process easy by allowing you to scroll through all of your images to add the Alt Text so that you don't have to locate them on every single page. Click here to learn how to do this.
See the international WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard for more information.
Although, the Schools-Online editor has a range of text colours to choose from, we recommend caution when selecting coloured text. Choose effective colour contrast to ensure you meet the colour contrast guidelines, for example, yellow text on white background is a low colour contrast and would be difficult for someome with low contrast sensitivity to read.
The Government have produced a useful guide, which explains why school websites should meet accessibility regulations.
Ways to make your website more accessible
Areas where you can easily make your school website more accessible include:
Images - Adding Alt Text
Alt text refers to the text that describes images on websites and is a legal requirement. It can be read by screen readers to someone, who may be visually impaired. Don't worry if you haven't yet got round to adding Alt text, as our editor makes this process easy by allowing you to scroll through all of your images to add the Alt text so that you don't have to locate them on every single page.
If an image is purely decorative, the alt text should be empty. However, it is still a requirement to have the Alt attribute (without any text). To add empty Alt text, you would just type a pair of quotation marks, as follows “”.
We have added a new Image Admin area that allows you to manage your images more efficiently. In this area, you can browse through your entire image library and add image information where required. Click here to learn how to do this.
Colours
Colour contrast between text and background is important on web pages. It affects some people’s ability to view the information. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommend minimum levels for colour contrast between text and background, based on a mathematical formula. Many organisations provide colour contrast checkers, for example https://www.tpgi.com/color-contrast-checker/
Documents
Many older PDFs don’t support accessibility. Simply create a newer version of the document, as newer PDFs have accessibility built-in. However, these still might not be appropriate for everyone, therefore, consider offering alternatives, for example printed versions of documents with larger fonts sizes.