Web Accessibility Policy

Purpose of Policy

Content on Gettysburg College websites should be accessible to all, should comply with federal statutes, and should foster a culture of inclusive design in the creation and publishing of digital content and services. The Gettysburg College Website Accessibility Policy is designed to promote the ability of all individuals, regardless of ability, to access the full range of information and services provided through the college’s website. All web content and documents posted on the College’s websites must comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards.

Scope of Policy

This policy applies solely to Gettysburg College’s websites: www.gettysburg.edu, gettysburgmajestic.org, and gettysburgsports.com.

Definitions

The following terms have been defined for the purposes of this policy. Definitions provided here do not necessarily apply to how terms are used in other College policies.

Content Management System (CMS): A content management system is a software platform that provides a digital framework for the management of content on a website.

Content owner: A content owner is the individual or organizational unit that created the content or caused it to be created.

Gettysburg College websites: The Gettysburg College websites are: www.gettysburg.edu, gettysburgmajestic.org, and gettysburgsports.com.

Web and digital content: Web and digital content includes but is not limited to HTML, PDF (Portable Document Format), Word, Excel, audio, image, and video files.

Web content editor: A web content editor is any individual who adds, edits, or removes content within the website, whether directly or through coordination with Communication & Marketing’s web team.

Web templates: Web templates are HTML containers that construct the user interface and application functionality of sites within the Gettysburg College web site.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Athletics is responsible for the development and/or maintenance of accessible web templates and content within Gettysburg's Athletics CMS.
• Communications & Marketing (C&M) is responsible for the development and / or maintenance of accessible web templates within Gettysburg's centrally-maintained content management system (CMS). Communications & Marketing is also responsible for the development and / or maintenance of accessible web content within Gettysburg's centrally-maintained CMS. C&M provides basic training for web content editors in best practices for developing and maintaining web content.
• Content owners are responsible for incorporating the costs, the training, and the timeline necessary for accessible content into the web content request process.
• Data Systems is responsible for the development and / or maintenance of accessible web templates within Gettysburg's centrally-maintained CMS. Data Systems provides accessibility training for content owners and web content editors and maintains a list of trained employees.
• The Gettysburg Majestic marketing team is responsible for the development and / or maintenance of accessible web templates and content within the Gettysburg Majestic CMS.

Policy Description

Training

Content owners who prefer not to use third-party remediation services for documents must complete an accessibility training program offered by Gettysburg College which will cover the importance of accessibility, how to create accessible content, and how to remediate accessibility issues. A pre-requisite of this training is the sponsoring department’s commitment to purchase ongoing licenses for the suite of tools necessary to create and remediate documents such as PDFs, Word, Power Point, and images. 

Addressing accessibility issues (remediation)

All new or modified content for the website (including document files e.g., PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations) must be remediated for accessibility standards compliance before being published. This includes, but is not limited to, providing alternative text for images on web pages, ensuring proper heading structure, and providing transcripts for audio content.

If a content owner or web content editor has completed the Gettysburg College accessibility training and purchased the necessary digital tools to perform self-remediation for accessibility compliance, their content may be added to the Gettysburg College website without further review for accessibility issues. Communications & Marketing will continue to review all new and modified content for broader communications purposes.

Opting out of self-remediation

Content owners and web content editors who do not have the capacity to train and self-remediate, or who do not purchase the necessary tools to complete this work, will submit a request to Communications & Marketing to have files processed through third-party remediation services (to be paid for by the content owner) prior to being added to College websites.

Enforcement

Audits for compliance

Communications & Marketing will conduct annual audits of the Gettysburg College web site to inventory non-compliant content.

Noncompliant Content

When noncompliant content is identified, the content owner will have a remediation window of 30 days, followed by mandatory removal of noncompliant content. Failure to comply with this policy may result in the removal of the content. Repeated violations may result in revocation of self-remediation privileges of content editor.

Policy Management

This policy is owned, implemented, and administered by Gettysburg College’s Office of Communications & Marketing, Office of Information Technology, and Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Related Materials

• WCAG 2 Overview (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
• Web accessibility and inclusive design (Gettysburg.edu)
• Disability services and support (Gettysburg.edu)
• Revised 508 Standards and 255 Guidelines (US Access Board)
• Applicability and Conformance Requirements (General Services Administration)