What Applies?
All digital assets - including web pages, documents, and media – that are accessible by staff and the public are subject to these minimum accessibility requirements. In other words: if your content can be accessed on a device by anyone aside from yourself, it needs to be accessible.
Responsibility
Content creators are responsible for evaluating their own digital content, especially if it’s non-public. FSU has a contract with SiteImprove, an automated accessibility dashboard that can be used for auditing and help with remediation, but this only works for public websites. Digital assets that are only available to staff/faculty are typically password protected and will need to be assessed/audited through other methods. This also means that there likely won’t be any administrative supervision by FSU, so we must police ourselves to ensure that we catch any issues before they affect any staff, faculty, or students that rely on these accommodations.
Potential Penalties
- Private and Class Action Lawsuits in pursuit of damages
- Federal Injunction
- Regulatory Investigation
- Brand reputation loss
Conformity Standards
The WCAG technical standard, which are the guidelines used by the new government policy – indicate 3 levels of conformity: A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest). The minimum acceptable compliance level for government institutions is AA, though FSU MED may set our own minimum standard.
Suggested Tolerance Levels:
- A: Zero tolerance, these issues should be resolved as soon as they are identified
- AA: Zero tolerance, these issues should be noted and fixed when possible; this is the technical standard for state and local governments
- AAA: Mild tolerance, low priority – these issues should be documented when found and resolved at the editor’s convenience
- Aria: Should always be present for certain features (such as navigation lists), and otherwise added where applicable with care taken to not be misused
- Structure: Proper outline structure and heading usage should continue to be used in all places
Exceptions
There are limited situations where digital assets are not expected to meet the expected WCAG compliance requirements. The following exceptions list were taken, almost verbatim, from the resources page on ada.gov, with certain sections omitted for lack of relevance.
Archived web content
- Web content that meets all four of the following points would not need to meet WCAG 2.1, Level AA:
- The content was created before the date the state or local government must comply with this rule, or reproduces paper documents or the contents of other physical media (audiotapes, film negatives, and CD-ROMs for example) that were created before the government must comply with this rule, AND
- The content is kept only for reference, research, or recordkeeping, AND
- The content is kept in a special area for archived content, AND
- The content has not been changed since it was archived.
Pre-existing conventional electronic documents (that are not in use)
- Documents that meet both of the following points usually do not need to meet WCAG 2.1, Level AA, except in some situations:
- The documents are word processing, presentation, PDF, or spreadsheet files; AND
- They were available on the state or local government’s website or mobile app before the date the state or local government must comply with this rule.
- This exception does not apply to documents that are currently being used for existing services, programs, or activities
Links and Resources
Remediation Guides
Policy Information
Auditing Tools
- SiteImprove (links to FSU ITS sign-up)
- Automated website accessibility auditing dashboard
- Free service provided by FSU
- Limited to public websites and PDFs
- Accessibility Insights
- Chrome browser extension with varying levels of accessibility audits, both automated and guided
- Created by Microsoft