How to make your non-UIS-themed website accessible
All Georgetown websites must be AA-compliant upon launch.
Launching a new non-UIS-themed website
This is the process for launching a non-UIS-themed website.
- Take the accessibility training courses. (optional but recommended)
- Automated testing: You will need to address all A and AA errors and warnings identified by Siteimprove. When your site is ready, you can submit the request form to add a site to Siteimprove (new window). If your website is password protected you will need to check the accessibility of individual pages using the Siteimprove chrome plugin (new window).
- Manual Testing: You will need to complete the manual accessibility testing checklist (new window). You can use the manual testing guide to help you understand how to catch the errors that automated testing misses.
- If you’re not sure how to test your site for issues, you should contract with Siteimprove or another reputable accessibility tester to perform testing for you and produce a report (note that there will be a cost for this).
- If your automated and manual testing reports are positive (i.e. no A or AA issues found), request an accessibility review from UIS (new window). These typically will take about a week.
- If there are errors in either report, you’ll need to fix them yourself or hire someone to make the fixes for you. You can provide a justification for why it’s impossible to fix certain issues when you request an accessibility review from UIS (new window). If the final report includes justifications, please allow up to 3 weeks before your intended launch date to give us enough time to review your justifications, and give you enough time to make additional fixes if need be.
- Web Services will review your report and do cursory testing. If Web Services finds errors, you’ll be required to fix outstanding errors.
- When the AA requirement is satisfied, your website can launch.
Getting Started with Accessibility
- Take the accessibility training courses
- Start with the 5 essential fixes
- Use Siteimprove to easily see what issues need to be addressed (sign up for the training to get access to Siteimprove)
- Prioritize A-level errors and warnings, then AA-level errors and warnings, then Review items
- Install the Siteimprove extension for Chrome (new window) to check individual pages right inside your browser window.
Every time you publish a page
- Check every image on the page for descriptive alternative text. More help with alternative text.
- Check your buttons and links – is the link text descriptive enough? More help with descriptive link text.
- Open the page in Chrome and click the Siteimprove Chrome Browser Extension (new window) button (you’ll have to install the extension before you can use it). Use the Siteimprove rules guide (new window) to fix any A- and AA-level errors and warnings.