Accessibility & ADA Compliance

Why It Matters

As a public agency and educational organization, Canyons School District is committed to making its websites accessible to all students, parents, patrons and employees.  This means making information available in multiple languages and following accessibility standards toward complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

What is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility refers to the design and publishing practices we use to remove barriers that may prevent people who have disabilities from interacting with our webpages.  Our District and school sites are designed with accessibility in mind.  The blogs and headers, for example, were designed to be clean and clutter-free while providing a good contrast between the text and the background.  All our web properties work on mobile devices and multiple browsers.  They also are organized to meet the user’s needs, or to be easy to navigate and consistent in how they function.

But there are additional steps that web managers can take when publishing blog posts, adding hyperlinks and embedding images.

  • Make hyperlinks contextual.  When embedding a web link in a blog post, use descriptive language, such as, “view our brochure.”  Screen readers read the link text, and linking to words, such as, “click here” gives people no information about what they’re clicking on.
  • Name your graphics and photos before uploading them.  You can add an Alt field Links to an external site. for images in your media library to help describe what’s happening in the image, or write a detailed caption.  It also helps to reference important images and their content within the text on your page or blog post. (ex. "the picture below shows a graph of...")
  • All videos should have closed captioning Links to an external site..

PDFs and Images with Text

Web managers should avoid presenting textual information as images or embedded PDF files. When feasible, documents such as newsletters, flyers, and event calendars should be converted into a web page.

In situations where posting an image or screenshot of a document is preferred or necessary, the screenshot should be accompanied by a text description.  The text description should appear immediately above or beneath the image and must include important details found in the flyer such as date/time/location.

Sometimes it may be helpful to provide a downloadable PDF version of a page that can be printed.  This can be achieved by placing an appropriately labeled direct link to the PDF at the top and/or bottom of the page, for example "Click here to download the bell schedule as a PDF."

At the discretion of the Web Manager, it's also possible to add direct links to PDF files in the header navigation menu.  For example, it may be more appropriate to link directly to a PDF version of your school's student handbook, or a form which needs to be printed out and signed.  In this case, every effort should be made to ensure that the PDF is ADA accessible Links to an external site. before uploading it to the website.

Guidance and Accessibility Testing

The U.S. Government has published a resources page Links to an external site. with information about how people with disabilities use the web along with tools for testing the ADA compliance of your website.