The university’s Office of Civil Rights agreement requires a review of our boisestate.edu and affiliated university websites, social media feeds, and other online and digital content.
This agreement contains six main provisions:
- Adopt an accessibility standard (completed)
- Provide notice (completed)
- Conduct an audit (in process)
- Engage in remediation (in process)
- Update testing and remediation protocol (coming later this year)
- Develop a plan to maintain accessible features (coming later this year)
Where are we currently?
Since 2017, Boise State Policy 8140 has required that all electronic information meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) AA success criteria. Additionally, the university has an Accessibility landing page that allows anyone to provide feedback or request assistance regarding the accessibility of our content.
We are currently working on completing the requirements of Provision 3: Conduct an audit. This audit includes compiling an inventory of our content and then performing manual testing to identify accessibility barriers.
With Monsido, we can access a full inventory of our content on our boisestate.edu sites. For affiliated websites we can inventory a sampling of content for assessment.
Document and Video Review Notifications
We will soon send reports of documents and videos on university websites to primary site administrators to ask them to review media and determine if it is relevant and accurate, necessary to keep, and provide guidance for moving content to other platforms depending on audience and purpose.
This is to necessary to reduce our overall footprint of inaccessible content on our public websites, saving you time later during the remediation phase.
We next will complete manual testing.
What does manual testing look like?
To manually test our web content for accessibility, we must review the following features:
- Alternative text for images: All important images and graphics have meaningful text descriptions
- Link descriptions: Links are described and unambiguous so users don’t need to read the surrounding text to understand the context
- Tables: Ensure tables are not used to layout the content in a visual way and are structured correctly with a header row
- Heading structure: Headings are present and have a meaningful hierarchy to improve user navigation
- Electronic documents: Ensure all documents have been reviewed for accessibility
- Videos: Captions, audio description, and transcripts are present
- Social media posts: Graphics have associated text to convey the purpose and meaning; videos contain captions, audio description and transcripts
How can I get started with manual testing?
You can use Monsido to start a manual review of your web content. If you don’t currently have a Monsido account, please visit Webguide: Request a Monsido Account to get started:
- After logging in to Monsido, access the Accessibility module, then Checklist. Select the Filter then Labels, Content Author – See Webguide.
- Review Webguide: Fix Accessibility Issues for assistance reviewing these issues.
Review Electronic Documents
Unless granted an exception by the Directory of Web Strategy, all documents published on Boise State’s public facing webpages must meet accessibility requirements either verified through testing or with an accessible web alternative.
Criteria for Exceptions
Exception requests for documents required to support the university’s mission or operations will be reviewed by the Director of Web Strategy and include the following categories:
- Required by law
- Required for accreditation
- Required to support the university’s mission or operations
- Granted an exception based on its purpose
- Has a fully accessible web alternative of the content available
For details on how to review your PDF documents in Monsido, visit Webguide: Review Published PDFs in Monsido.
Review Videos
All video content requires accurate captions for all sounds, audio descriptions for all images, and a text transcript. Review the videos published on your pages for these criteria. If you have questions, you can visit Webguide: Producing Time-based Media for tips and support.
Review Social Media Posts
You can use the checklist available at Webguide: Social Media Content Accessibility Checklist for tips on ensuring your social media content is accessible to all.
Need Additional Assistance?
Join the weekly Monsido Monday working group! This optional, informal weekly working group is a great opportunity to spend an hour each Monday reviewing content in Monsido along with your peers. Ask questions, receive guidance, and get a jump start on manually testing your web content. Sessions are hosted by the Web Accessibility Team.
If you have questions or needs additional information, please contact us at OITAccessibility@boisestate.edu.