Third Party Curriculum and Web Accessibility

Third Party Curriculum

The school district requires that any third-party online curriculum that is made available to enrolled students or the public complies with level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Consent Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 or any revised version of those guidelines.

Policy Statement

We are committed to ensuring our websites are accessible for all people regardless of ability or access method.  Any new or updated website produced by us will be accessible and conform to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, Level AA.

To affirm our commitment, people designated as website content editors will be trained in the functions of web accessibility tools and techniques. Periodic compliance scans will be conducted to detect Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 violations. Violations will be corrected to the best of our ability in a timely manner.  Upon request, information contained on our website can be made available in an alternative format and when that is not possible we will employ other methods to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities. 

Purpose

Our goal is to ensure that everyone has equal access to information and can fully interact with us through our website.  Our website is assessed for compliance by simulating methods employed by people with various disabilities (e.g. the use of a screen reader or navigation by keyboard only), employing validators and monitoring content on a regular basis.  When assessing our website we target accessibility standards compliant with WCAG 2.0 Level AA.  We are committed to upholding our legal obligations and believe that ensuring equal access is our ethical responsibility.

Accessibility Features

Our website makes use of widely accepted standard techniques and preferred practices to provide the highly accessible content for visitors to our website.  These include, but are not limited to, the characteristics of usability for screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, high contrast text and well-formed, linear content.

Accessibility Challenges 

• Our website was redesigned and launched with accessibility as a top priority, however some 3rd party services linked from our website may not fully comply with required standards.  When we find a vendor website falls short we contact them about their plan and timeline for becoming compliant.  If a vendor does not plan to become compliant in a reasonable period of time we evaluate whether we can provide the service ourselves or switch to another compliant vendor, whenever possible. 

• Some of our content, especially content produced prior to the June 2019 redesign, is in attached files such as PDFs and not fully accessible. We are working to transition from attached files whenever possible and when we must attach files we intend to provide only accessible PDFs. Attachments produced prior to June 2019 will be converted as time and resources permit.

• There are some instances where we are unable to provide information in an accessible format (e.g. forms or documents provided by 3rd parties). When we are unable to provide accessible content we are available to assist website visitors upon request.