The National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education
Which educational entities have developed web accessibility policies?
Many institutions of higher education have developed web accessibility policies, guidelines, and/or standards. Some use well-recognized standards and guidelines, such as those produced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C®) or the federal Access Board in response to Section 508 (see What is the difference between the W3C guidelines and the Section 508 standards for web accessibility?). Other campuses have developed their own standards. Some campuses merely state the policy and expect employees developing websites to comply; others provide training and support to help campus units comply. Some inflict penalties for noncompliance; others give awards to campus units with exemplary pages. There are nearly as many approaches to web accessibility policies and support as there are campuses.
One of the first postsecondary institutions to develop a web accessibility policy was the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Their policy is profiled in the AccessIT Knowledge Base article University of Wisconsin–Madison: A Promising Practice on Development, Articulation, and Support of a Web Accessibility Policy.
AccessIT also has written Knowledge Base articles profiling Southwest Missouri State University, noteworthy in that accessibility is integrated into its mainstream web policy, and Michigan Virtual University, with four quality standards for its online courses, one of which is accessibility.
These are only three examples among many. The list of educational entities that are addressing web accessibility concerns at the policy level continues to grow. The University of Washington has compiled a list of over forty postsecondary accessible design statements and standards. The list is available on their Accessible Web Sites Resources page.
Also, the W3C maintains an international list of policies on their Policies Relating to Web Accessibility site. This site includes a list of U.S. state policies. In some cases, state policies may cover state educational entities.
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