Writing an accessibility statement
This page is for project managers, accessibility coordinators and the editors who publish the statement. Exponential ships no accessibility statement template; the project names that as a gap against the Web Accessibility Directive (Accessibility standards: EN 301 549). The outline below follows the W3C WAI guidance, Developing an Accessibility Statement (https://www.w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/). If your country publishes a model statement, use that model; it takes precedence.
Note This page describes features and common practice; it is not legal advice. Check the law that applies to your organization with your legal counsel.
Contents
- Before you write
- An outline
- What to say about the CMS
- Publishing it in Exponential
- Keeping it current
- Related pages
Before you write
You need the result of an evaluation of your site (see "Auditing your public design with WCAG-EM"), a list of known problems with a plan, and a contact that someone actually answers.
An outline
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Commitment | the body's commitment and the site the statement covers (its address) |
| Standard and status | the standard (for example WCAG 2.2 AA) and the status: fully, partially or not conformant, as your law words it |
| Known limitations | each problem in plain words, where it occurs, and the alternative offered meanwhile |
| Plan | what will be fixed and by when |
| Feedback and contact | how to report a barrier or ask for content in another format: e-mail, phone, form |
| Enforcement | the body people can turn to if the answer is unsatisfactory, where your law names one |
| Technical information | the technologies the site relies on (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) |
| Assessment | how the site was evaluated (self-evaluation or external), when, by whom |
| Date | date of the statement and of its last review |
What to say about the CMS
Most statements do not need to mention the CMS at all: they are about the public site. If you mention it, keep to the project's words:
- the administration design admin4 is designed and tested against WCAG 2.2 AA and rated "Partly complies" by the project;
- EN 301 549 and Section 508 conformance is "Unverified";
- there is no VPAT or Accessibility Conformance Report.
Never write that the site is accessible "because it uses an accessible CMS".
Publishing it in Exponential
- Create the statement as a normal content object (an article or a folder with text, in your content tree), in every language siteaccess of the site.
- Give it a stable, readable URL alias, for example
/accessibility, so the address in your footer and in reports never changes (URL aliases and nice URLs). A global alias can also be set under Setup > URL translator (Global URL aliases). - Link it from the footer of every page: in your pagelayout or the shared footer (Shared header and footer).
- If you offer a feedback form, build it with the information collector (Building a contact form) and state in the privacy notice what happens with the messages.
- Write the statement itself accessibly: real headings, plain language, no information only in a PDF.
Keeping it current
- Review it at least once a year and after every significant change (redesign, new extension, new service).
- Keep earlier versions: the object's versions page keeps them (
/content/history/<object id>), subject to the version history limit (Versions of an object). - Update the date line with each review.
Related pages
- W3C WAI, Developing an accessibility statement
- Accessibility standards
- Testing your site's accessibility
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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