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Length of time to make an entire website accessible

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From: Preast, Vanessa
Date: Nov 1, 2016 7:15AM

Hello,

I was hoping that I'd be able to get some sense of reasonable time estimates for how long it takes to make an academic website accessible at WCAG 2.0 AA. For planning purposes, is it a reasonable accomplishment within 3.5 years?

In case it helps, these are some factors that might influence the situation:

1. One person is responsible for maintaining the website, but this person also has other responsibilities

2. There is one digital accessibility professional who currently conducts accessibility analyses, but the website is only one of many areas this person must oversee for accessibility.

3. The website, not including blogs, is maybe 1000 pages or so. I don't know how many forms or other interactive elements might exist beyond the job application software, which I think is partially a 3rd party system.

4. The website is Wordpress (I think) so fixing some page templates should immediately impact many pages across the site.

5. Many areas across campus generate content for the website but it currently filters through the webmaster to put onto the site

6. An automated accessibility checker is available on campus (SortSite by PowerMapper)

I'd be interested in learning more how other small academic institutions with limited staff have gone through the process of making their website accessible. How long did it take? How did you manage the analysis and fixing process? How did you plan for maintaining accessibility in the long-term? What did you do about accessibility of 3rd party systems?

Thanks,
Vanessa