What Your School or College's Accessibility Statement Must Include
Most schools and colleges either do not have an accessibility statement at all, or have one that was copied from another institution's website years ago and has never been updated. Neither situation is a good position to be in as federal compliance deadlines approach and ADA litigation continues to rise in education.
An accessibility statement is not just a legal formality. It is a public commitment to your users, a documented part of your compliance program, and often the first place a plaintiff's attorney looks when evaluating whether your institution takes accessibility seriously. Getting it right matters.
This post explains what an accessibility statement is, what it must include, where it should live on your site, and how to keep it current.
What Is an Accessibility Statement?
An accessibility statement is a page on your website that describes your institution's commitment to digital accessibility, identifies the standard you are working toward, discloses any known areas of non-conformance, and gives users a clear way to report problems or request accessible alternatives.
Think of it as the public-facing documentation of your accessibility program. A well-written statement does not claim perfection. It claims transparency, effort, and accountability, which is exactly what a good faith compliance posture requires.
Who Is Required to Have One?
Public colleges and universities operating under ADA Title II are required to have an accessibility statement as part of their broader compliance obligations. The DOJ's final rule establishes WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the required standard, with most public institutions facing a compliance deadline of April 26, 2027.
Private K-12 schools and private colleges are not directly covered by the Title II rule, but they are subject to ADA Title III as places of public accommodation. While Title III does not mandate an accessibility statement by name, having one is part of a defensible compliance posture and is strongly recommended by web accessibility practitioners and legal advisors working in this space.
Any institution that receives federal funding is also subject to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which carries its own nondiscrimination obligations for digital content. An accessibility statement is consistent with those obligations as well.
What an Accessibility Statement Must Include
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative identifies the core elements that every accessibility statement should contain. For educational institutions, we recommend treating these as minimums, not maximums.
A Clear Commitment to Accessibility
State plainly that your institution is committed to making its digital content accessible to people with disabilities. This does not need to be elaborate. One or two sentences that name the commitment and the population it serves is sufficient. Avoid vague language like "we strive to" — be direct about what you are working toward and what standard you are using.
The Accessibility Standard You Are Applying
Name the standard explicitly: WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Identify whether your institution currently fully conforms, partially conforms, or does not yet conform. If you do not fully conform, say so. Courts and users alike respond better to transparency about known gaps than to claims of full compliance that a ten-minute WAVE scan would contradict.
If your institution has completed a formal audit, reference it: include when it was conducted and by whom. This is a meaningful signal of a documented compliance program.
Known Limitations and Non-Conformances
This is the section most institutions skip, and it is one of the most important. If your site has known accessibility gaps, disclose them. Identify which areas are not yet fully compliant, explain why, and state what you are doing about it and when you expect to address it.
Common disclosures for educational institutions include:
Older PDF documents that have not yet been remediated
Third-party tools or embedded content that your institution does not control directly
Course materials uploaded by faculty that are under review
Legacy pages or microsites that are part of a remediation plan
Disclosing known limitations is not an admission of failure. It is evidence of a functioning compliance program that is actively identifying and addressing issues rather than ignoring them.
A Feedback Mechanism
This is arguably the most operationally important element of the statement. Users need a clear, accessible way to report an accessibility barrier or request an accessible alternative format. Your statement must include at minimum:
An email address specifically for accessibility feedback
A phone number as an alternative contact method
A commitment to respond within a defined timeframe (W3C recommends stating a target response time — two to five business days is common)
Information about how to request an accessible alternative when content is not yet remediated
A feedback form can supplement email and phone, but should not replace them. Not everyone can use a web form, and the whole point of an accessibility feedback mechanism is that it must be accessible itself.
Contact Information for the Responsible Party
Identify the person, office, or role responsible for accessibility at your institution. This might be your ADA Coordinator, your web accessibility coordinator, your Director of Disability Services, or your IT office. The contact should be someone who can actually receive a report and take action, not a general institutional email address that goes unmonitored.
Date of the Statement
Include the date the statement was last reviewed or updated. An accessibility statement with no date, or a date from five years ago, signals that accessibility is not actively managed at your institution. Update the date whenever you update the content, and review the statement at minimum annually.
What an Accessibility Statement Should Also Include
Beyond the required elements, a stronger accessibility statement for an educational institution will also include:
How testing was conducted. Was this a self-assessment, an automated scan, a manual audit, or a combination? Naming your methodology builds credibility. If you engaged an outside firm to conduct your audit, say so.
Technical information about compatibility. Which browsers and assistive technologies has your site been tested with? This is particularly useful for students who use specific screen readers like JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver and want to know whether your site is expected to work with their tools.
A formal complaints or escalation process. If a user is not satisfied with your response to an accessibility complaint, what recourse do they have? For public institutions, this may include referencing the Department of Justice or the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights as enforcement bodies.
A link to your broader accessibility policy. If your institution has a published institutional policy on digital accessibility, link to it from the statement. The statement is the user-facing document. The policy is the governance document. Both matter.
Where the Statement Should Live on Your Site
Your accessibility statement should be easy to find from any page on your site. Best practice is to link to it from your site footer, which means it appears on every page without cluttering your navigation. Many institutions also link to it from their ADA or disability services pages.
The statement page itself must be accessible. This sounds obvious, but it is worth stating: an accessibility statement that fails basic WCAG checks is both ironic and legally problematic. Run a quick WAVE scan on the statement page itself before it goes live.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Claiming full WCAG 2.1 AA conformance without an audit to back it up. If your institution has not conducted a formal assessment, do not claim full conformance. Partial conformance with a documented remediation plan is a far stronger position than an unsupported claim of full compliance.
Using boilerplate language copied from another institution. A statement that names the wrong institution, references a different CMS, or lists a contact email that belongs to someone else is worse than no statement at all. It signals that accessibility is not taken seriously.
Treating the statement as a one-time task. Accessibility statements require regular review. Your site changes. Your CMS gets updated. New third-party tools get added. The statement should reflect your current situation, not the state of your site two years ago.
Omitting the feedback mechanism. A statement without a way to report problems provides no accountability. The feedback mechanism is the most important operational element of the statement for your users.
A Free Tool Worth Knowing About
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative offers a free Accessibility Statement Generator at w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/generator. It walks you through each required section and produces a standards-compliant statement you can customize for your institution. It does not store any information you enter, and it is a useful starting point even if you plan to refine the output significantly.
The Statement Is Not the Compliance Program
A well-written accessibility statement is a meaningful step. It is not, on its own, a compliance program. The statement describes what you are doing. The actual work is the audit that tells you where your site stands, the remediation that fixes what is broken, the training that keeps your content team from creating new problems, and the monitoring that catches issues before users encounter them.
If your institution has an accessibility statement but no audit on record, the statement is largely decorative. The most defensible compliance posture is a documented program with the statement as its public-facing component.
Schedule a discovery call to talk through your situation, or request a free homepage scan as a first step.
This post is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Institutions with specific compliance questions related to ADA Title II, Title III, or Section 504 should consult qualified legal counsel.