WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY

The Anchorage School District (ASD) is committed to making the information on its website accessible to individuals with disabilities in compliance with the requirements of Section  504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The District's website is designed to ensure that people with disabilities can effectively access, understand, navigate, and interact. To ensure compliance, we are building and maintaining our website according to  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines  (WCAG) 2.0, Level AA.

While we have strived to do our best to ensure all our content is accessible, if you are experiencing difficulty accessing information on the ASD website, please contact the Web Communications by phone at (907) 742-4193 or by email at webcom@asdk12.org. When requesting assistance via email, please include "Accessibility" in the subject line. Also include the following when communicating with ASD regarding accessibility issues:

A description of your accessibility concern.

The best way to contact you (email address, phone number, or both).

ASD will make appropriate accommodations to facilitate access to any website content.

WEBMASTER ACCESSIBILITY TIPS

Importance
- Improves access to information for everyone, including people with disabilities, English language learners, and people who use older technology or mobile devices
- Improves Google search rankings
- Helps to reduce time spent making website changes in the future
- It’s the law
Tools
- Monsido Extension: Tool built into browsers gives webmasters an overall picture of their website’s accessibility and identifies problem areas. Contact Web Communications for instructions on sign-up.
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool: In-context tool points out color contrast issues, missing ALT tags, and more.
Design
- Use the Embed Code app sparingly: Use it mostly for YouTube video embeds and only at other times if you’re a code expert. Other apps are built with accessibility standards in mind.
- Start with a proper document structure: Use heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) or the Heading app in Blackboard for page titles, subtitles, and other sections.
- Use alternative text: All images must include a description in the ALT tag field
- Create tables for tabular data: Avoid using tables for page design
- Make links descriptive: avoid linking text to the same URL multiple times on the same page.
- Add closed captioning to all videos: Upload to or use videos from YouTube, and they’ll do it for you!
- Avoid the use of PDFs when possible: Only link PDFs that have a proper structure and are tagged appropriately. (For more: Create Accessible Digital Products)
- Make sure the color of the text on the page contrasts well with the background color:
  - Use a color contrast checker such as WAVE to ensure a ratio of 4.5:1. For text larger than 18 point or 14 point bold, the ratio must be at least 3:1.
  - Add a drop shadow to text in cases where the style guide doesn’t offer enough contrast between the foreground and background.
  - Underline links to add visual cues for people with color blindness

TRAINING AT ASD

Looking for accessibility training? Take the course set up in Canvas!

ONLINE COURSES AND WEBINARS

Blackboard: SEO and Accessibility: Two Secret Weapons for Website Success

Learn how search engine optimization (SEO) and accessibility are critical to website success in this webinar from Blackboard.

Lynda.com: Accessibility for Web Design

Learn how to make your website easy to use for all users in this online course.

Blackboard: Creating accessible documents

Learn how to fix a scanned document