Web Accessibility Policy

Policy Approve By
Scott McCallum, Superintendent
Policy Date (original policy date)
Policy Prepared By
Danya Borowski, IT Manager
Policy Category
Technology

SUBJECT:         Web Accessibility Policy

Purpose

The WSSB is committed to providing equal access to Web-based information in accordance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

This ensures that WSSB Web pages will be accessible by staff, students, and customers with disabilities. The Web Accessibility Policy will satisfy minimal accessibility standards for Web pages as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Scope

This policy applies to all WSSB employees, contractors, consultants, temporaries, and other workers including all personnel affiliated with third parties building web pages for WSSB.

Policy

Public Web pages at WSSB must satisfy priority level one checkpoints for accessibility as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Level AA compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 [1], including the guidelines associated with these principles:

  1. Perceivable [2]: Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
  2. Operable [3]: User interface components and navigation must be operable.
  3. Understandable [4]: Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
  4. Robust [5]: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Each department is responsible for identifying the Web pages, which must be accessible. For legacy Web pages, a prudent attempt must be made to achieve compliance as soon as possible. New Web pages must satisfy priority level one checkpoints.

Where compliance is not possible or may require extraordinary measures, the superintendent or designee may grant exceptions to this policy.  Where the superintendent or designee grants exceptions, an equally alternate method will be provided in either text-based documents, pdfs or online text.

Enforcement

Any employee found to have knowingly violated this policy may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.