Accessibility
Note: This page is where we publish our practices and internal policies for compliance reviews and for administrators of sites we host.
For users creating sites and content, please see our Complete Guide To WordPress Accessibility.
WordPress is among the most accessible web authoring tools available, and our services build on this to help ensure both the back-end authoring and front-end content is usable and accessible to all.
Please read on to learn more.
Table of Contents
Accessibility Statement
CampusPress is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone, and applying the relevant accessibility standards.
Measures To Support Accessibility
CampusPress takes the following measures to ensure accessibility of our WordPress hosting & services:
- Include accessibility throughout our internal policies. For example, all new or updated plugins or themes that we create must conform with the WCAG 2.2 guidelines at level AA.
- Integrate accessibility into our procurement practices. When evaluating WordPress plugins and themes, support services, and other 3rd party tools that we use, accessibility is included in the research and considered in decision making. We will not contract with new services that have significant accessibility shortcomings.
- Provide continual accessibility training for our staff through conferences, internal training, and support for our design, development, and support teams.
- Employ formal accessibility quality assurance methods. We use a combination of manual and automated tools in accessibility auditing.
Conformance Status
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Our WordPress hosting & services is partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard. The parts that don’t conform are mostly inherited from WordPress core or 3rd party plugins and refers to the dashboard of the Content Management System only. For sites where we are involved in creating new WordPress themes, we commit to WCAG 2.2 at a minimumm of level AA.
Feedback
We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of our services. Please contact us if you encounter accessibility issues on any of our sites or sites that we host:
- Phone: 1-(855)-293-6318
- E-mail: contact@campuspress.com
- Postal address: 120 19th St N, Ste 201, PMB 88100, Birmingham, Alabama, 35203-3219, United States of America
We try to respond to feedback within 24 hours.
Technical specifications
The accessibility of our services relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:
- HTML
- WAI-ARIA
- CSS
- JavaScript
These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.
Limitations and Alternatives
Despite our best efforts to ensure the accessibility of our services, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.
Known limitations for our services:
User generated content: The main function of our service is to host user-generated content. This also includes WordPress themes and plugins created by others. We cannot ensure the quality of contributions, code, and content from others. We work with contributors, content authors, and customers to help with training and awareness of accessibility best practices. We will forward any known issues we encounter or that are reported to us and provide guidance whenever possible. Please contact us at contact@campuspress.com if you encounter any issue.
Assessment Approach
CampusPress assessed the accessibility of our site and services by the following approaches:
- Self-evaluation
- External evaluation by accessibility teams of our customers – primarily universities and schools.
Formal Complaints
We aim to respond to accessibility feedback within 24 hours and to propose a solution within 3 business days.
This statement was created using the W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool.
WordPress
The WordPress Accessibility Team works to make WordPress accessible to everyone, including the billion users with disabilities who may want to access the sites on your CampusPress network. Their Accessibility Team works hard to ensure that everyone can read and create websites.
WordPress Accessibility Handbook
The WordPress Accessibility Handbook can be found here: make.wordpress.org/accessibility/handbook. You’ll find answers here to broad questions like “what is web accessibility” alongside a variety of more detailed educational and technical resources.
Additional WordPress Resources
Services
We can assist with fixing any issues found during an accessibility audit that is caused by a plugin or theme. We can also recommend tools and services to complete audits and provide guidance on best practices for content.
Themes
All CampusPress hosted sites come pre-loaded with a set of Accessibility Ready themes that are all designed to be WCAG2.0 AA compliant. These themes have been reviewed by the WordPress community’s accessibility team to verify they meet the required accessibility standards listed here.
You can preview our accessibility ready themes in our CampusPress theme showcase by clicking on Live Preview on a theme thumbnail.
Accessibility Ready themes can be viewed and applied to individual sites by going to Appearance > Themes in the site’s dashboard and then selecting the Accessibility Ready category at the top of the page.
We recommend using a known Accessibility Ready theme as a parent theme whenever building a new theme or starting with a theme framework that incorporates best practices. All designs should be checked for color contrast compliance before development begins. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss any aspect of accessibility when building a new theme.
Resources
Guides And Docs
- Complete Guide To WordPress Accessibility (CampusPress Blog)
- Image Alt Text Best Practices (Siteground Blog)
- Website Accessibility Resources at Penn State University (Hosted by CampusPress)
Evaluation Tools
There are several tools that you can use to identify accessibility issues on your site. Some of our favorite include:
- Colorblind Web Page Filter — applies a color-blind filter to your site.
- Firefox Accessibility Extension – check the use of structural markup in a page.
- Access Monitor – Automated scan that tests the accessibility of your site – test either the front-end or admin pages.
- Total Validator — All-in-one (X)HTML validator, accessibility validator, spell checker, and broken link checker.
Training And Professional Development
- WPCampus Learning Library – Recordings from education-focused sessions at previous WPCampus conferences.