Why Accessibility Matters
Accessibility is about making sure that the content we publish can be used by everyone — including people who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers, people with visual or cognitive disabilities, and people accessing content on mobile devices or in low-bandwidth environments. For the West Virginia Department of Education, that means every document we publish should be readable, navigable, and understandable regardless of how someone accesses it.
The Legal Requirement
In March 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring state and local government agencies to meet digital accessibility standards for web content and documents. The WVDE, as a state agency, is covered by this rule.
The rule specifically requires conformance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA — the same standard WVDE has adopted for our website and published documents.
The original compliance deadline has been extended, but the requirements themselves have not changed. We are actively working to meet this standard across all published content.
Beyond Compliance
Meeting a legal requirement is the minimum. The stronger reason to prioritize accessibility is the people we serve.
West Virginia's students, families, educators, and community members include people with a wide range of abilities and circumstances. When we publish a document that a screen reader cannot read, or a form that cannot be navigated by keyboard, we are not just failing a compliance checklist — we are failing the people who need that information.
Accessible documents also benefit people without disabilities. Clear structure, descriptive headings, and well-organized content make documents easier to read and navigate for everyone. Accessibility and good document design are not in conflict — they reinforce each other.
Our Standard: WCAG 2.1 Level AA
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 is an internationally recognized standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It defines how to make digital content accessible to people with disabilities.
WVDE follows WCAG 2.1 Level AA for both our website and the documents we publish. This is the level required by the DOJ's Title II rule, and it represents a meaningful, achievable standard for most content types including PDFs.
WCAG is organized into three levels of conformance:
- Level A — the minimum. Failing to meet Level A criteria creates serious barriers for users of assistive technology.
- Level AA — the standard. This is what WVDE is required to meet, and what most accessibility policies and regulations reference.
- Level AAA — the highest level. Not required, but worth pursuing where feasible.
To claim Level AA conformance, content must meet all Level A and Level AA criteria — both levels together.
The POUR Framework
WCAG 2.1 is built around four core principles, often referred to as POUR. Every accessibility guideline in WCAG — and in this guide — traces back to one of these principles.
Perceivable
Information must be presented in ways that users can perceive. Content that relies solely on one sense (like color alone, or audio alone) creates barriers for users who cannot access that sense.
In practice, this means providing text alternatives for images, captions for video, and sufficient color contrast so that content is readable by people with low vision or color blindness.
Operable
Users must be able to navigate and interact with content. Content that requires a mouse, or that presents time-based interactions without alternatives, excludes users who rely on keyboards, switch devices, or other assistive inputs.
In documents, this means ensuring that navigation tools like bookmarks and links are functional, that tab order in forms is logical, and that interactive elements can be operated without a mouse.
Understandable
Content must be readable and predictable. Users should be able to understand what content says and how it works.
In documents, this means using plain language where possible, setting the document language so screen readers use the correct pronunciation, and labeling form fields clearly so users know what information is expected.
Robust
Content must be structured in a way that can be reliably interpreted by a wide range of tools, including current and future assistive technologies.
In documents, this means using proper tags and structure rather than visual formatting alone. A heading that is styled to look like a heading but is not tagged as one may appear correct visually, but a screen reader will not recognize it as a heading and users will lose the ability to navigate by heading structure.
How This Guide Is Organized
The guidance in this section is organized to reflect two phases of work:
- authoring (building accessibility into documents from the start) and
- remediation (fixing accessibility issues in existing PDFs using Adobe Acrobat).
Authoring accessibly is always preferable. A well-structured source document in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint will export a well-structured PDF. Remediation in Acrobat is more time-consuming, more error-prone, and has real limitations — some issues that could have been prevented in the source document require significant manual work to fix after the fact, and some cannot be fully resolved at all.
The pages in this guide cover both approaches. Where a topic involves work in both the source document and Adobe Acrobat, both are addressed.