Evidence of an Accessibility Plan (October 2024)

Thompson School District is committed to ensuring our digital content is accessible to everyone, including individuals with disabilities. Accessibility means that all digital content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, allowing everyone to access the same information and services easily.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination based on disability and requires us to provide reasonable accommodations and accessible communications. Similarly, Colorado House Bill 21-1110 mandates that all government entities, including Thompson School District, meet accessibility standards to ensure no one is excluded from receiving services due to a lack of accessibility.

We have established an Accessibility Committee to develop and implement our accessibility plan, which includes the following key areas:

• Requirements: We aim to ensure that the district’s digital media meets or exceeds the Level AA requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1.
• Ongoing Review: We will conduct regular accessibility audits of all district and school websites, documents, and other digital content and implement necessary improvements to ensure accessibility.
• Training and Awareness: We will train staff on accessibility best practices, ensuring everyone is equipped to create and maintain accessible content.

Accessibility compliance is an ongoing journey. We will provide regular updates on our progress and continue to seek ways to enhance accessibility across all our digital platforms.

Thompson School District has identified that we are at the Launch stage of the state's accessibility maturity level for September 2024.

We have made great progress since HB21-1110 has passed, considering substantial challenges to Thompson School District:

• Limited budget for our program: $15,000 for accessibility monitoring and compliance tools
• Current vendors are being inventoried, and determinations on exceptions are ongoing
• Large organization with site-based management
• Paradigm shift and discomfort with change
• Minimal access to professional learning time for users

• Extra duty contracts created for school and Learning Services web/social media coordinators (approximately $32,000)
• District Divisions are reminding their leadership to pay attention to the Accessibility guidelines.
• Included accessibility into our procurement processes: “Software Request & Onboarding Process Flow” and RFP process.
• Defined a technology accessibility transition plan with a timeline, goals, roles, and responsibilities for our organization.
• District-wide staff provided an online professional learning module entitled “Digital Accessibility Concepts” to complete.
• We created an Inclusive Design online resource guide for district staff use.
• The District Board of Education presentation, policy, and memo templates were updated for accessibility.
• We have provided contact information and support for receiving accessibility feedback and accommodation requests online or by phone.
• Integrated accessibility requirements into our technology development stages, including design, development, user experience, and quality assurance.
• We will continue to create and post on front-facing web pages a progress-to-date report that is updated quarterly and demonstrates concrete and specific efforts toward compliance with the OIT rules.
• We will continue to self-audit websites, digital content, and software within the organization to locate areas for improvement.
• Over 24% of district board policies are available on tsd.org in HTML format, available for translation.
• High school course descriptions were imported into the website, and an online edition of the course guide is under development.
• Over 26% of school family guides/handbooks are available on school websites in an accessible and translatable format.