The Stanford Office for Digital Accessibility and the Office of General Counsel have mandated that all website owners document their websites’ digital accessibility compliance status and plans. All H&S web editors must also take a required digital accessibility training. Below, we outline why this is happening, the specific digital accessibility requirements for all Stanford sites, and how to complete the training.
Jump to:
The university has a legal compliance mandate regarding Digital Accessibility under ADA and WCAG , so that users with and without disabilities can navigate and access the contents of Stanford sites. Earlier this year, the DOJ sent a reminder to universities regarding web accessibility compliance and expectations. We also understand that making Stanford more inclusive is essential to meeting our education standards. All Stanford website owners and editors must conform to the Stanford University Online Accessibility Policy outlined in the Stanford Administrative Guide 6.8.1 , including conformance to WCAG 2.0, Levels A and AA. Because there are so many components to digital accessibility, the University is focusing on specific pieces now, and will progressively expand the scope until all of our sites meet all of the requirements.
The first set of mandates requires all Stanford sites to include the following:
All created on or after January 1, 2023 must have proper captions. Proper captioning means that there are no spelling errors, punctuation is included, and the text aligns with the spoken words. It also includes relevant background sounds, such as suspenseful music, audience applause, birds chirping, etc. More information about captioning videos, including detailed instructions, can be found on the Captions and Audio Descriptions page at SODA . All files, such as podcasts, created on or after January 1, 2023 must include a transcript. A transcript is the same word-for-word content as captions but presented in a separate file. It can be typed out on your page, for example in an Accordion that users can expand or collapse, as a link to a separate page with the transcript, or as a linked file. More information about audio transcripts can be found on the Captions and Audio Descriptions page at SODA . Documenting in a shared the person responsible for accessibility for each site, and the remediation steps and timeline for each of the above. The H&S web team has taken care of the action plan for all sites on our platform.
Define a plan and timeline to ensure PDF documents are accessible when published to websites.
To ensure our web editors succeed in bringing all websites and digital content into compliance with accessibility standards, we have partnered with the Stanford Office of Digital Accessibility (SODA) to create a comprehensive training program. This program is available through Deque, an online accessibility training platform.
To ensure you receive training on all of the critical topics, and to keep the training as short and focused as possible, two custom learning paths were created within the training portal (Deque).