Accessibility
Davidson College understands that cultivating a broadly diverse community is crucial to our educational mission and to our foundational commitment to leadership and service. Davidson is committed to making our website accessible to all visitors, including those with disabilities.
Reporting Accessibility Issues
If you find an accessibility issue with a Davidson College webpage or site, please send an email with a description of the issue and relevant web addresses to the digital communications staff at digitalstaff@davidson.edu.
Website Accessibility Features
This site includes the following accessibility features:
- Option to skip to main content
- Pages are navigable using keyboard controls
- Properly structured page headers
- Option to enlarge type using standard keyboard controls
- Alternative text descriptions for images
- Captioned videos
- Appropriate color contrast for page headers, text and navigational items
Accessibility Guidelines & Testing
The college uses Siteimprove, a paid service, to ensure new and existing pages on the davidson.edu website comply with best practices and accessibility guidelines as defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (down to Level AA) and Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act (2017).
Siteimprove offers regularly scheduled, automated checks as well as on-demand checks against WCAG 2.0 Level A and Level AA criteria.
The digital staff also use a number of additional accessibility tools and checks:
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool offered by WebAim. A free WAVE browser extension is available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
- Sortsite Checker – Each page is checked against more than 700 standards-based checkpoints.
- Siteimprove Google Chrome Extension
- Google Chrome Web Developer Toolbar
- Google Chrome Accessibility Developer Tools
- Google Chrome View Image Info (properties)
- Manual review of HTML code
- Manual review of site navigability using only keyboard controls
- JAWS Screen Reader in demo mode
Accessibility Training & Publishing Workflow
As part of our training program for new website content editors, College Communications digital staff members cover common accessibility checkpoints, including alternate text descriptions for images, properly tagging attachments, using descriptive text for hyperlinks, captions for videos, properly structuring page headings, among other accessibility best practices.
A large majority of davidson.edu webpages edits go through a content management system publishing workflow review to catch issues before they are published to the live website. Issues that are found are remediated and follow-up training is provided to web content authors.