How to Create Accessible Content in Your CMS: A Guide for Non-Technical Staff
Most accessibility problems on school and college websites are not created by developers. They are created by the people who update the site every day: the communications coordinator who uploads the new athletics schedule, the admissions officer who posts a PDF of the viewbook, the faculty administrator who adds a video to the department page.
This is not a criticism. These are people doing their jobs without having been shown what accessible content looks like. The good news is that the fundamentals are learnable, and applying them does not require technical knowledge or access to your site's code.
Here is what every content editor at a school or college needs to know.
Use Heading Styles, Not Bold Text, to Create Structure
Headings are one of the most important structural elements on a web page. Screen readers use them the way sighted users use visual hierarchy: to understand what a page contains and navigate directly to the section they need. When you bold a line of text to make it look like a heading, it looks right visually but provides no structural information to a screen reader. The screen reader reads it as body text, and the user loses the ability to navigate by heading.
In most CMS platforms, heading styles are available in a dropdown in the text editor, typically labeled Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on. Use these instead of bold text for section titles. Use them in order: Heading 2 for main sections, Heading 3 for subsections, Heading 4 for sub-subsections. Do not skip levels. Do not use heading styles just to make text larger or more prominent.
The H1 heading is the page title. There should be only one H1 per page, and it is usually set automatically by your CMS based on the page title field. You generally do not need to add it manually.
Write Descriptive Alt Text for Every Meaningful Image
Alt text is the text description attached to an image that screen readers read aloud to users who cannot see the image. It is also what appears if the image fails to load. Every meaningful image on your site needs alt text that describes what the image shows.
Good alt text is specific and descriptive. "Students in a chemistry lab working with microscopes" is useful. "Image" is not. "IMG_4872.jpg" is not. The filename is never acceptable alt text.
A few practical guidelines:
Describe what is in the image in a way that serves the same purpose as the image itself
For photos of people, you do not need to name everyone, but describe what they are doing
For charts or graphs, describe the key information the chart conveys, not just "bar chart showing enrollment data"
For decorative images that add no information, your CMS may have an option to mark the image as decorative or leave the alt text field empty intentionally — check your platform's guidance on this
Do not start alt text with "Image of" or "Photo of" — screen readers already announce that it is an image
Most CMS platforms have an alt text field in the image upload or insert dialog. It takes thirty seconds to fill in. Make it a habit.
Check Color Contrast Before You Use It
WCAG requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and its background for normal-sized text, and 3:1 for large text. This matters for users with low vision, color blindness, and age-related vision changes, and it affects readability for everyone in suboptimal viewing conditions.
If you are choosing colors for a callout box, a banner, or text over an image, run a quick contrast check before using them. The WebAIM Contrast Checker at webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker is free, takes thirty seconds, and shows you whether a color combination passes or fails. Enter the hex codes for your text color and background color and it tells you immediately.
Text placed over a photograph is one of the most common contrast failures on school websites. The text may be readable over a dark area of the image but invisible over a light area. If you are placing text over a photo, use a solid or semi-transparent color block behind the text to ensure consistent contrast regardless of what the image shows.
Make Your Documents Accessible Before You Upload Them
PDFs are one of the most common accessibility failures in education, and the easiest time to address them is before they are created, not after. An accessible Word document converts to a more accessible PDF than an inaccessible one.
Before converting a document to PDF, check these things in Word:
Use built-in heading styles. Format section titles using Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. from the Styles panel, not by manually bolding and increasing font size
Add alt text to images. Right-click any image in Word and select Edit Alt Text to add a description
Use the built-in list formatting for bullet points and numbered lists rather than manually typing hyphens or numbers
Set the document title in File, then Properties, then fill in the Title field
Run the built-in accessibility checker in Word under Review, then Check Accessibility, before converting to PDF
When saving as PDF, use Save As rather than Print to PDF, and make sure the option to include document structure tags for accessibility is checked
One more thing: scanned PDFs are not accessible. A scanned document is an image of a page. A screen reader cannot read it. If you are posting a scanned document, consider whether you can recreate it as a native digital document instead.
Caption Every Video You Post
WCAG requires that pre-recorded video with audio content have captions. This is not optional for educational institutions under Title II or Title III. Auto-generated captions from YouTube or other platforms do not meet the standard on their own because they are frequently inaccurate, especially with proper names, technical terminology, and discipline-specific language that is common in academic content.
If you are posting a video to your school's website or CMS:
Use the auto-generated captions as a starting point and edit them for accuracy before publishing
Pay particular attention to names, places, course titles, and any specialized terminology
Ensure captions are synchronized with the audio
If a video has meaningful visual content with no narration, a text description or audio description track may also be required
Write Descriptive Link Text
Screen reader users often navigate a page by tabbing through links. When every link says "click here" or "read more," the user has no idea where each link goes without reading all the surrounding text. Link text should describe the destination or purpose of the link on its own, out of context.
Instead of "Click here for the admissions application," write "Download the undergraduate admissions application." Instead of "Learn more," write "Learn more about our financial aid programs." This is a small change that makes a significant difference for users navigating by keyboard or screen reader, and it also improves your page's SEO.
The One-Minute Check Before You Publish
Before publishing any new page or updated content, run through this quick checklist:
Does every image have alt text?
Are section titles formatted as headings, not just bold text?
Do all links have descriptive text?
If there is a video, does it have accurate captions?
If there is a PDF, was it created from an accessible source document?
If you used custom colors, did you check the contrast?
None of these checks require technical expertise. All of them prevent the most common accessibility failures that appear in ADA complaints against educational institutions.
Accessible content is not a separate track from good content. It is what good content looks like.
Shine Media Studio works with K-12 schools, colleges, and universities on website accessibility audits, remediation consulting, staff training, and content build-out. If your institution needs help knowing where it stands or getting the work done, we are ready to help.
Schedule a discovery call to talk through your situation, or request a free homepage scan as a first step.