Accessibility Compliance

Required Completion Date: April 24, 2026

Per the requirements of the Department of Justice and the Commonwealth of Virginia, all university web content must adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards to ensure digital content is accessible to people with disabilities.

Elements of these requirements include text, images, sound, videos and documents, and apply to all services, programs and activities offered by the university.

All Editors

Improve your accessibility skills by attending a live 30-minute session on Six Ways to Improve Your Web Accessibility in Cascade (coming soon). These demonstrations will be hosted semi-weekly through April 2026. No registration required.
Talk to your POC and offer to help.
- They can share what accessibility issues have been identified in their accessibility reports so you can help fix the issues in Cascade. Each week a fresh scan is completed and their reports will reflect if issues have been resolved.
- All documents need to be assessed for accessibility compliance. See below for details.

Required Steps for Points of Contact (POCs)

Webpages & Images

To begin, review and follow the instructions for fixing issues reported on your Acquia Web Governance Accessibility Module Checklist.

Fix all "Issues to Fix" on your Checklist.
- If an issue has been fixed, it will not appear in the next weekly scan.
- If you have reviewed the Accessibility Module help page and do not understand how to fix an issue, discuss it with a member of our team by attending POC Accessibility Office Hours or email us at [[creative]].
Review and resolve all "Warnings" on your Checklist. Warnings require that you evaluate the reported item to confirm if the issue requires action for compliance.
- If you have reviewed the Accessibility Module help page and believe no action is needed, or do not understand the warning, discuss it with a member of our team by attending POC Accessibility Office Hours or email us at [[creative]].
- If we confirm no action is needed, we will suppress the warning from appearing in your future scans.
Review and understand the "Issues to Review" included on the Checklist. These checks can only be manually performed and will always appear on your Checklist.
- These are potential issues that cannot be machine tested.
- These are issues to be knowledgeable about to avoid creating accessibility barriers with the identified content elements during your ongoing maintenance of the website — primarily headings, tables, images and multimedia.

PDFs and Other Documents

Documents included on your websites must also be accessible. The Acquia Web Governance tool does not scan your documents for accessibility compliance — it only scans them for quality assurance items such as broken links and editorial policies.

Note: PDF is a file type intended for printed content and should not be used for housing informational content on your website. PDFs are also more difficult to make accessible than a webpage, and they are more difficult for visitors to use on mobile devices.

Review and evaluate all documents.
For those that are actively used and the content is informational in nature, convert them to webpages to ensure accessibility and improve usability across devices.
For those that are actively used but need to remain in PDF format (forms, etc.), use the Digital Accessibility Resource Guide to learn how to test and ensure they are compliant.
For those that are archival in nature but deemed appropriate to keep on the website, evaluate if they meet the federal and state exception rules for archival content and therefore do not need to be remediated for accessibility.

Exception for Archival Content

An exception for meeting accessibility compliance requirements exists only for content that passes all of the following "archival" tests:

the content was created before April 24, 2026, or reproduces paper/physical versions of the content which was created before April 24, 2026
the content is kept only for reference, research or record keeping
the content is kept in a special area of "Archived" content
the content has not changed since archived