Accessibility Statement

Manheim Township School District is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.

This website endeavors to comply with best practices and standards as defined by Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act and all levels (A/AA/AAA) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance with these guidelines helps to make the web more user-friendly for all people.

If you would like additional assistance or have accessibility concerns, please contact us here.

All site pages are periodically run through a W3C compliant validation product, currently SiteImprove, to monitor compliancy to WCAG guidelines. We also manually employ a variety of additional accessibility verification tools, including Lighthouse, WAVE, and aXe.

We will continue to test the site to make sure that our content on the site is accessible to all visitors.

We will also continue to work to improve the accessibility standards of our website.

The Manheim Township School District website includes a variety of accessibility features, including:

• Skip to content
• Alternate text descriptions for images
• Closed captioning for video content
• Limited use of text-based images and time-based media
• Logical tabbing sequence for keyboard-driven navigation
• Appropriate color contrast between text and background elements

Our website currently averages above 98% compliance with accessibility standards when tested against a variety of validation products (the industry average compliance level for educational institutions is below 70%, according to SiteImprove). The following issues are currently preventing us from reaching 100% compliance.

• HTML Validation: In order to reach 100% compliance, all HTML code on the site must be valid according to W3C standards. In part because we leverage code and features from third parties, and in part because we value accessibility and functionality above code validity, not all of the HTML code on our website is 100% valid.
• CSS Validation: In order to reach 100% compliance, all CSS code on the site must be valid according to W3C standards. In part because we leverage code and features from third parties, and in part because we value accessibility and presentation above code validity, not all of the CSS code on our website is 100% valid.
• PDF and Document Content: The first phase of our accessibility initiative was focused on user-facing web and video content, and it involved a total redesign of our website. The second phase of our initiative will focus on our downloadable content, such as PDFs and other documents.

• W3C accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
• U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
• WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.

• Lynx: A free, text-based web browser.
• ChromeVox: A free screen reader for Chrome OS and the Google Chrome web browser.
• VoiceOver: Free screen-reading software built into Apple's macOS.
• NVDA: Free screen-reading software for Microsoft Windows.
• For more information about accessibility:
  • Microsoft Windows Accessibility Features
  • Apple macOS Accessibility Features
  • Apple iPhone Accessibility Features
  • Apple iPad Accessibility Features
  • Android Accessibility Features