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Web Forms or lack of

Reply with quote I recently started a job as a webmaster for a small community college. We are in the process of doing a complete redesign however as the only developer/designer it is going to be a long time before our new site goes live (with accessibility in mind for the entire development).

Our current site is ancient MS frontpage disaster that I’m stuck dealing with until I can get the new site live. However I have a question regarding section508/wcag and forms.

Being a college we have an almost uncountable number of off the wall forms, however none are actual html/php/etc.. type forms. Any form we have is basically just a printable version of a pdf, some allow you to enter content and then print, but it is all print and hand in the paper copy.

My question is how wrong is this from an ADA standpoint? Are Printable forms like this okay? or should these forms be built online html/php/etc..?

While we plan to eventually convert as much as we can and go digital in the future, the college wants to discuss making the site more accessible and all of these printable forms are gray area to me and I was not sure if they are okay, passable, or completely wrong.

Thanks in advance for any input!
Reply with quote Hi, ksulli813,
First congratulations on your new job. What a task!

While it’s exciting to know that you are being empowered with this re-write responsibility look at it like a marathon race.

You are correct that the forms are covered by ADA (you can call it Section 508). Before you just charge in and take it on consider the following:
1 – do you have buyin from higher ups re the whole site, or just the UI?
2 – Are you the only one who has thought about the legal ramifications of this? You’d have to ask
3 – Do you know how to create accessible Word docs, PDFs or online forms? There may be training sessions in your future

After you solve for above 3 items you have to do this triage:

1 – Determine which forms are used most frequently AND are public facing – admission forms?, requests for help of one type or another?, housing?, classroom content?
2 – Find the owner of the form if possible and enlist their aid to see if they can mitigate the form or (at least have the discussion with some sympathetic department heads)
3 – Gather some simple rules about the forms that all can agree on, i.e. All forms created from this point onward must be in accessible format (Word is easier than PDF – hint)

I could go on and on and you are welcome to contact me and we can discuss further but I’m new to this forum and don’t know how the reaching out/ social thing works here.

Also you might consider joinging IAAP ahttp://www.accessibilityassociation.org/ which is an organization of folks working on accessibility. Questions like yours get posted and answered there.

good luck, eliannaj
Reply with quote Thank you so much for the reply,
Your information is greatly helpful as we are starting to hold committee meetings to discuss what changes we need to make.

The college as a whole is starting to focus on accessibility so for the most part I am backed by the senior staff. I am currently just working up as much information as I can so to alleviate as much push back as possible when we attempt to create new standards.

That link should be greatly helpful thanks again

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