Website Accessibility

Website Accessibility at College of Education

The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued updated Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidance for web, app, and content accessibility that affects all public entities, including Penn State as a higher education institution, as reflected in this high-level summary.

The DOJ has given a deadline of April 24, 2026, for all new digital content and online resources to be accessible.

Starting now, College of Education will begin assessing our compliance with the new guidance, with an initial focus on ensuring the following types of content meet accessibility requirements:

• Website text, images, sounds, videos, controls, and animations.
• Electronic documents, including PDFs, presentation files, and spreadsheets.

Website Accessibility Training

To help faculty and staff at Penn State prepare for the new accessibility requirements, there is an Accessibility Learning Path through a series of self-paced Canvas courses. For more information on these courses and to sign up, please visit https://accessibility.psu.edu/training/learningpath.

Website Accessibility Tools

Below are recommended tools to use in resolving accessibility issues.

• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool: WAVE is an evaluation tool that helps identify accessibility on webpages. It can be used online at https://wave.webaim.org or as a browser extension.
• WebAIM Color Contrast Checker: This contrast checker can be used to check foreground and background color to ensure it meets WCAG AA requirements.
• WebAIM Accessibility Checklist: This checklist will help to run through all items that need to be evaluated on a page for accessibility compliance.

Accessibility Resources

• Penn State Accessibility and Usability
• WebAIM Accessibility Guidelines
• W3C Web Accessibility - WCAG 2.0 Guidelines
• NCDAE Accessibility Documents Cheat Sheets