Accessibility Toolkit

Ensuring Accessible and Inclusive Digital Content for All

Elon University is committed to fostering an inclusive digital environment that ensures equal access to information and resources for everyone. This toolkit is designed to empower faculty, staff and students to create accessible and compliant content for our university’s website, emails, and other digital materials.

What is ADA Compliance?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. ADA compliance in the digital realm ensures that websites, emails and documents are designed to be accessible to everyone, including individuals with disabilities. By following accessibility best practices, we uphold Elon University’s commitment to equity and inclusion.

What Does “Accessible” Mean?

An accessible digital experience ensures that all users, regardless of their abilities or assistive technologies, can interact with and understand your content. This includes:

Visual Accessibility: Ensuring content is perceivable for users with visual impairments, such as those using screen readers or requiring high-contrast text.
Auditory Accessibility: Providing captions or transcripts for audio and video content.
Cognitive Accessibility: Creating content that is clear and easy to understand.
Physical Accessibility: Designing interfaces that are operable without requiring precise movements or complex gestures.

An accessible digital experience is achieved through the implementation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provide a framework for making digital content usable and inclusive for everyone.

What is WCAG?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standards for web accessibility. These guidelines are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and define how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. WCAG compliance is organized into three levels:

A (Basic): The minimum level of accessibility.
AA (Mid-level): The standard Elon University aims to meet for its digital content.
AAA (Advanced): The highest level of accessibility.

WCAG ensures that websites and digital content are usable by people with a wide range of abilities and devices.

The Four Core Principles of WCAG

Accessibility is built on four foundational principles, summarized by the acronym POUR:

Perceivable: Content must be presented in ways that all users can perceive. This includes providing text alternatives for images, captions for videos and proper use of headings.
Operable: The interface must be easy to navigate and usable by all. This means ensuring keyboard navigation works, avoiding time-dependent interactions and providing clear, consistent navigation.
Understandable: Content and interfaces should be easy to understand. This involves using clear language, providing instructions where needed and ensuring predictable functionality.
Robust: Content should be compatible with a variety of user agents, including assistive technologies like screen readers and magnifiers.

Legal Requirements for Accessible Digital Content

Creating accessible content is not just a best practice — it’s the law. Federal guidelines such as the ADA and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act require that digital content be accessible. At Elon University, this applies to:

Websites: Pages must comply with accessibility standards to ensure usability for all.
Emails: Communications should be designed with accessible text, structure and visuals.
PDFs and Documents: Files must include accessible text, logical reading order and proper tagging.

Failure to meet these requirements can lead to legal consequences and, more importantly, the exclusion of individuals from accessing critical information.