1. Governance
  2. Enhanced Homesite Accessibility

Enhanced Homesite Accessibility

Background

Queen's "homesite" (the queensu.ca homepage and 12 additional pages in the main navigation) was last relaunched in Spring 2023.

In building the website, the University Relations (UR) team prioritized our obligations to accessibility (see AODA Section 14). This meant means compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA.

Both before and after the relaunch, the UR team consulted industry standards for design and development and employed multiple accessibility testing tools. We achieved excellent results from our initial testing phase. It was also understood, however, that some user experiences are very challenging to test for through automated tools and to code for without advanced expertise. We received some feedback from the Queen's community that underscored the importance of closing this gap in testing.

Process

We retained the guidance of experts in the field of web accessibility from David Berman Communications. They evaluated our homesite using multiple methodologies and against multiple pertinent standards. Once they identified the barriers to accessibility that remained in our code, they coached us through making changes.

Certification

Once all the coding issues were addressed, the team at David Berman Communications determined that our homesite is fully compliant with current and future standards. We were granted license to display the current year’s edition of the Certification Mark for WCAG 2.1 Level A/AA conformance.

 

It is my professional opinion that the provided templates meet or exceed all applicable Level AA guidelines of the W3C WCAG 2.0 Guidelines, thus conforming to the requirement for large organizations under AODA’s IASR regulations 1 July 2011.

It is my professional opinion that the provided templates all meet or exceed all conformance requirements, including applicable Level A and Level AA success criteria of the W3C WCAG 2.1 Guidelines.

David Berman, RGD, FGDC, CPWA

Continuous improvement

The impact of the Homesite accessibility audit goes beyond just the Homesite project. Our learning from the evaluation process has already been applied to:

  • Queen's Gazette (relaunched in the fall of 2023). We fully evaluated the site with the NVDA Screen reader and keyboard only navigation. We applied fixes to entire site, to bring it in line with standard we achieved for the homesite

  • WebPublish Service. We continue to work on the main menu to correct screen reader and keyboard only navigation issues. We are continually re-evaluating the services and fixes are ongoing

  • Utility bar and other shared tools. Issues with the search functionality, sign-in-links, and cookie disclosure have been fixed.