After you've completed a self-evaluation of your website, you likely have a list of items that you need to address. That's OK! It's common, especially during first-round reviews, to find a significant number of ways your digital service or content can be made more accessible. Let's get to work on fixing them.

Remediation

Assign Work

Depending on your role, it's unlikely you are able to address every accessibility barrier found during the evaluation. Most barriers can be divided into two buckets of "content" and "code". Content barriers would be something like missing captions on videos, having vague link text, and poor quality alt text. Code-level barriers would be issues like page elements receiving keyboard focus in an incorrect order, or needing to add a "pause" button on an auto-playing video. 

Prioritize

Not every barrier is equally problematic, nor does every barrier require equal effort to resolve. Major barriers might be able to be handled in a couple minutes, while minor inconveniences could require significant creativity and effort to address. 

You have leeway in how you qualify different barriers. When you request an expert evaluation from the ICT Accessibility Program, issues are prioritized as follows:

High - This issue will fully block some users from a core function of the service or significant portion of content. Example: Using a graph where different data series are identified only by color will fully block users with colorblindness from understanding this information. Recommended to be completed within 30 days.

Medium - This issue causes a noticeable inconvenience to some users, but can be worked around with effort. Example: Vague link text like "Learn More". Users will have to read or listen to the entire page to understand where this takes them, or click on links randomly to see where they go. They aren't fully blocked from the content or service, but it is substantially more difficult to use. Recommended to be completed within 60 days.

Low -  This issue might cause a minor inconvenience to some users. Example: A logo has alt text of "University of Oregon logo" (Logos should be flagged as decorative so they don't get read by screen readers). This is technically incorrect and is a minor irritant for someone who uses a screen reader and hears this message at the start of every page, but doesn't cause anyone substantial barriers. Recommended to be completed within 90 days.

If a student or member of the UO Community has alerted you that they are currently experiencing a barrier to accessing your digital content, you must address it as soon as possible, ahead of all other proactive remediation items in the queue.

We also recommend prioritizing items more highly if they fall into one or more of the following criteria:

• Highly visible / high traffic - Any barriers found on your website's homepage are likely to be more important than an internal page.
• High importance / mission critical - If you manage a Canvas course with both Required and Optional material, make sure the Required material comes first.
• Widespread - Especially on templated mediums like websites, if you have an issue on one page, it might appear on every page. Generally, you should address widespread issues before one-off issues.
• Easy - People experiencing barriers don't care if an issue is easy or difficult to fix, they just want it fixed. Prioritize items with a greater benefit-to-effort so you can get more done, sooner.

Seek Expert Help and Do the Work

Sometimes accessibility barriers can be easy to identify, but the solutions to those barriers are less clear. If you want an informal consultation on specific issues without an in-depth accessibility audit, an accessibility expert is glad to talk with you. Contact ictaccess@uoregon.edu to schedule to review.

Review the Work

Especially with code changes, accessibility fixes for one issue may inadvertently cause issues elsewhere. Re-review your content or service after making any changes to confirm no new errors were introduced.

Plan For The Future

Be proactive in ensuring the accessibility of your digital presence. It's easier and provides a better user experience to be accessible upfront via training and awareness than it is to be continually looking backwards at what is currently broken. Once you have completed a self-assessment of your current digital content or service and fixed any issues found, we encourage you to go beyond and take the next steps to minimize any remediation efforts you need to make in the future.

Create a Plan for Future Reviews

Technology is always changing. Scheduling regular accessibility reviews will help you identify potential barriers before they have the chance to impact your users, and will prevent a sizeable backlog of tasks being created all at once.