Accessibility Plan
What is Accessible Web Content and Why is it Important?
Summary
Franklin Special District (FSD) is dedicated to ensuring equal access for our diverse community. We recognize that accessibility is vital for creating an environment—emotional, physical, and intellectual—where individuals with disabilities feel welcome, included, and valued. Our goal is to provide accessible environments and services for all users, including students, faculty, and staff with disabilities.
This Accessibility Plan has been developed in accordance with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) requirements, guided by the ADA Accessibility Standards and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Mission of the Accessibility Plan
The mission of the FSD Accessibility Plan is to empower individuals with disabilities by reducing or eliminating barriers that may hinder their academic success.
Accessibility
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education defines accessibility as meaning when a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally integrated and equally effective manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. Visit the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights for more information.
Goal of the FSD Accessibility Plan
FSD Accessibility Plan is committed to creating an environment that is accessible to all people, regardless of ability. The goal of the Accessibility Plan is to describe the actions that FSD will take to identify, remove, and prevent barriers to accessibility on FSD websites. These actions will benefit staff, faculty, students, families, and the broader community.
Objectives
- Communicate Commitment: Communicate the continual commitment of FSD to remove barriers to persons with disabilities and comply with the requirements of applicable local, state, and federal regulations pertaining to accessibility.
- Barrier Identification Process: Outline a systematic approach for identifying, removing, and preventing barriers to accessibility for people with disabilities.
- Action Plan Development: Detail a plan for addressing the barriers identified, including specific actions, timelines, and responsible parties.
- Ongoing Efforts: Describe the district's ongoing efforts to identify and mitigate barriers, including regular training for staff and stakeholders.
- Monitoring Progress: Describe how FSD will monitor the progress of the plan. Monitoring and audit findings will be recorded on a Google Sheet and shared with the Accessibility Coordinator.
- Public Availability: FSD will make the plan available to the public, ensuring transparency and community engagement. This will be done via the website, and annual parent notices through a mass notification system, such as ParentSquare. In addition, progress will be reported once a year during a school board meeting.
- Engagement with Stakeholders: Include a commitment to engage with individuals with disabilities, families, and advocacy groups in the planning and evaluation processes to ensure their needs and perspectives are prioritized.
- Technology Accessibility: Emphasize the importance of ensuring that digital tools and resources are accessible, including online learning platforms, communication tools, and information dissemination channels.
- Feedback Mechanism: Continue to use the online reporting tool to collect feedback from users regarding accessibility barriers they encounter so real-time mitigation efforts can be completed.
- Training and Awareness: Enhance training for district and school webmasters and social media administrators on accessibility best practices to foster a culture of inclusivity.
- Regular Review: Specify a timeline for periodic review and revision of the Accessibility Plan to adapt to changing needs and regulations.
Accessibility Coordinator Role
Position: FSD Communications Specialist (Accessibility Coordinator)
Responsibilities:
- Training and Advocacy: Provide annual training for district webmasters focused on accessibility best practices and remediation strategies. This includes guidance on identifying and removing accessibility barriers and advocating for adherence to improved accessibility guidelines.
- Annual Self-Assessment: Assist district webmasters in conducting an annual self-assessment to identify barriers within the content they manage. This process is essential for continuous improvement and accountability.
- Issue Identification and Remediation: Identify, document, and remediate website accessibility issues. Provide a tracking tool for them to report issues and mitigation efforts. Ensure that all identified barriers are addressed in a timely manner to enhance user experience for individuals with disabilities.
- Monitoring and Reporting: Monitor the progress of the Accessibility Plan and provide regular updates to the FSD Director of Schools. This includes tracking the effectiveness of implemented strategies and making adjustments as needed.
- Plan Updates: Review and update the Accessibility Plan annually to reflect new insights, regulations, and community needs. Ensure that all stakeholders are informed of changes and improvements.
- Website Scans: Conduct monthly scans of the website using both manual methods and third-party tools, such as WebAIMS WAVE, AudioEye and Finalsite, to ensure ongoing accessibility compliance. Implement necessary edits based on findings.
- Content Management Responsibility: Ensure website content creators know their responsibility to maintain the accessibility of their respective sections and pages on the FSD website. Department supervisors will communicate requested changes and provide accessible content for site updates.
- Collaboration: Collaborate with the Technology Supervisor and/or Instructional Technology Specialists to ensure that third-party vendors linked from the website or utilized in instructional settings understand and comply with accessibility requirements. Facilitate communication and training as needed.
Additional Considerations
- Stakeholder Engagement: Work with the Special Populations Supervisor to foster ongoing communication with individuals with disabilities, families, and advocacy groups to prioritize their needs in all accessibility efforts.
- Resource Development: Create and disseminate resources and guidelines for staff and faculty to promote awareness of accessibility practices within their own areas.
By refining the role of the Accessibility Coordinator with these responsibilities, FSD can ensure a proactive and effective approach to enhancing accessibility for all users.
Training Plan
All website content creators will be trained on accessibility and compliance requirements before receiving access to make changes to websites. This document has a list of barrier descriptions and resources as a reference.
Annual training sessions will be added to the FSD professional learning calendar for webmasters.
Barrier Identification
With support from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Franklin Special District (FSD) follows clear steps outlined in the FSD Accessibility Guidelines to address digital barriers and ensure online programs comply with Title II and Section 504. OCR has provided technical assistance to align FSD’s online services, programs, and activities with legal requirements.
As part of webmaster training, FSD references OCR’s video series, which covers how individuals with disabilities use technology, relevant federal laws, and strategies for identifying and addressing digital barriers. Topics include basic manual testing methods, effective color use, logical reading order, and meaningful video captions.
Additionally, the Department of Education has announced plans to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to amend Section 504 regulations, further protecting the rights of students with disabilities. A link to the training videos and other resources is provided at the end of this document.
Barrier Descriptions FSD Uses in Audit and Training
- Keyboard access: Can users access all functions and content, and complete all tasks, independently by using only the keyboard (<tab>, <enter>, <spacebar>, <esc>, and arrow keys)?
- Logical reading order: Does keyboard navigation follow a logical, predictable order?
- Skip links: Can keyboard-only users bypass long navigation menus, embedded social media feeds, etc., without using excessive tabbing?
- Visual focus indicator: Can users visually track where they are located on the page while navigating with a keyboard?
- Alternative (Alt) text: Are all important images and graphics labeled with meaningful text, associated captions, or adjoining descriptions so, for example, people who are blind and use assistive technology will have access to the relevant information contained in the image or graphic? For linked images, does the alternative text tell users where the link will take them rather than describe the image?
- Links: Are links well-named and unambiguous so users who are blind– without having to read nearby content – will understand the purpose and destination of each link? Common examples of ambiguous link names include “click here,” “read more,” “see all,” “http://…”-type, or “event notice,” and other ambiguous phrases.
- Color alone: Are there any instances where color alone distinguishes an object or state? If so, add another way to distinguish the object or state. For example, make sure color is not the only way to distinguish link text from the surrounding paragraph text, and ensure color-coding is not the exclusive way to convey essential calendar dates (e.g., “no school” dates are marked in purple).
- Tables: Does the page avoid using layout tables? If data tables are present, are they necessary to convey information, or could a more accessible presentation means be considered instead? If a data table is used, is it simple so no cells span multiple columns or rows? Are column and row headers programmatically labeled?
- Buttons, form controls, and other operable elements: Are they labeled appropriately, both programmatically and visually? Do the visual labels continue to be correctly associated with the elements when the screen is enlarged? If the elements have different states (such as form fields required for successful submission), are those conveyed by something other than color alone?
- Heading Structure: Are headings programmatically labeled with a meaningful hierarchy so people who are blind and using a screen reader can navigate a page according to its headings, listen to a list of headings, and skip to where they want to begin reading?
- Embedded videos and slide carousels: Where there are embedded videos or carousels, if they launch or rotate automatically, is that behavior necessary? If so, can a user pause or stop the video or carousel and later replay the video or carousel with keyboard commands? The ability to stop the video or carousel rotation can be important, not just while users are on the video or carousel but while in other parts of the page.
- Magnification: Have you re-tested everything when content is magnified to the “point of reflow” or in “responsive mode” when the formatting changes to be more mobile-friendly (typically around 200% pm standard laptop screens)? Are all contents and all functionality preserved and useful?
- Electronic Documents: Have you conducted an accessibility review of your documents using the software’s accessibility checker (e.g. “Check Accessibility” feature in Microsoft Word, “Accessibility Check” feature in Adobe Pro, etc.)?
- Videos: Is captioning present, or is a transcript available? Transcripts should only be used when the audio can be fully understood separately from viewing the video and does not reference video content.
- Social Media Posts: If graphic images are used, are they accompanied by text that conveys the same information? If videos are used, are they accessible as described in the previous text?
Resources
To ensure that all users, including people with disabilities, have a good user experience and can access online content, the following is a list of resources to assist with website accessibility.
Check Accessibility Features – A feature used in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat Pro to check if a document or PDF meets OCR recommendations.
AudioEye – An accessibility tool built into the FSD Content Management System (CMS) continuously scans the website and offers remediations.
FinalSite Accessibility Checker – FSD’s CMS, FinalSite, offers an accessibility checker within the content element. As webmasters add content to the site, they can use this check to ensure accessibility for many items.
FSD Web Accessibility Guidelines – Provide guidance to help with accessibility for web design, font types, and sizes, images, tables and graphs, and much more.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Video Series – A video series covering various topics on digital access in education, including how people with disabilities use technology, applicable Federal regulations, and identifying and remediating barriers to access. These videos have a wide-ranging coverage for those who want to know: What makes technology accessible for individuals with disabilities? And how can I make my site or platform more accessible?
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) – provides accessibility evaluation and training.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – An international organization committed to improving the web and provides free technical and educational resources via the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) .