A WCAG Self-Assessment Checklist for K–12 Districts: Where to Start
By Kalin Schoephoerster | KShep Creative
This is the sixth and final post in a six-part series on WCAG for K–12 districts. Previous posts cover what WCAG is →, what the conformance levels mean →, the difference between WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 →, the four POUR principles →, and what WCAG compliance actually requires →.
A full WCAG accessibility audit requires professional expertise and manual testing. But that doesn't mean districts can't do a meaningful self-assessment before one is conducted.
Understanding where your biggest gaps are — which content types are most likely to have issues, what the highest-impact problems look like, and how your most-visited pages hold up under basic scrutiny — gives your district a clearer picture of the work ahead and makes a professional audit more efficient when it happens.
This checklist covers the most common and highest-impact WCAG Level AA requirements across the content types K–12 districts publish most. It's not exhaustive — a professional audit will surface issues this checklist won't catch — but it's a practical starting point that requires no specialist software and no technical background.
Work through each section at your own pace. If you find issues, that's not a reason to stop — it's useful information. Document what you find and use it to start building a picture of where your district stands.
Before you start — what you need
To use this checklist, you need three things:
A browser and access to your district website. Most items can be evaluated by looking at representative pages — your homepage, an enrollment or contact form, a page with a video, and a page with images.
The free WAVE accessibility tool, available at wave.webaim.org. WAVE is a browser extension that scans a page and flags common accessibility issues automatically. It won't catch everything, but it will surface obvious problems quickly and is worth running on your most-visited pages.
The ability to navigate using only your keyboard. Tab moves between focusable elements. Enter activates them. Shift+Tab moves backward. Testing whether your site's navigation, forms, and interactive elements work without a mouse is one of the most revealing things you can do — and it requires nothing but your keyboard.
This checklist focuses on your website and web-based content. Document accessibility — PDFs, Word files, and downloadable resources — deserves its own evaluation. For that content type specifically, see PDF Accessibility for K–12 Districts →.
Images and visual content
Work through a representative set of pages on your district website — the homepage, a department page, a news or events page — and check the following:
Do all meaningful images have alt text that describes what the image shows and why it matters in context? (WAVE will flag images missing alt text with a red icon.)
Are decorative images — dividers, backgrounds, purely aesthetic elements — either given empty alt text or marked so screen readers skip them entirely?
Does your site avoid using images of text for important content? Text embedded in an image file can't be read by screen readers and can't be resized by users with low vision.
Do charts, graphs, and infographics have text alternatives that convey the same information the visual conveys?
Does content avoid using color as the only way to convey meaning? A required form field marked only by a red border, with no text label or asterisk, fails this check.
Video and audio content
If your district publishes videos — board meeting recordings, staff communications, instructional content, event recaps — check the following:
Do all videos with spoken content have captions? Not just auto-generated captions, but captions that have been reviewed for accuracy. Auto-captions are a starting point; they're not a finished accessibility feature.
Are the captions accurate enough to be useful? Names, technical terms, and proper nouns are where auto-captions fail most often.
Do videos have audio descriptions when important visual content occurs that the audio track doesn't describe? A presenter pointing to a slide without describing what's on it is a common example.
Are transcripts available for audio-only content — recorded announcements, podcasts, audio messages?
Do videos have a pause, stop, or hide control so users can stop motion content?
Navigation and page structure
These items require both visual inspection and keyboard testing. Navigate several pages using only your keyboard and check the following:
Does every page have a descriptive, unique title that identifies its content? The title appears in the browser tab. "District Home" is acceptable. "Page" or a blank tab is not.
Are headings used to organize content — and do they follow a logical hierarchy? Heading 1 for the page title, Heading 2 for major sections, Heading 3 for subsections. Headings should not be chosen based on how they look visually — they should reflect the structure of the content.
Is there a "skip to main content" link at the top of each page? This allows keyboard users to bypass the navigation menu and go directly to the page content. It may be invisible until focused — that's fine, as long as it's there and functional.
Can all navigation menus be opened and used with keyboard-only navigation? Tab through the menu and confirm every item is reachable and activatable without a mouse.
Is navigation consistent across pages? The menu should appear in the same location and work the same way throughout the site.
Do links have descriptive text that identifies their destination? "Download the 2025–2026 Family Handbook" is descriptive. "Click here" and "Read more" are not — screen reader users navigating by links hear those phrases with no additional context.
Forms and interactive elements
If your district has online forms — enrollment, contact, feedback, survey — test them using keyboard-only navigation and check the following:
Do all form fields have visible labels that remain visible when the field is active? Placeholder text that disappears when a user starts typing is not a label.
Are required fields identified by more than just color? A red asterisk with a text label ("required") meets this. A red border alone does not.
Do error messages clearly identify which field has an error and how to fix it? "Please enter a valid email address in the Email field" is useful. "Invalid input" is not.
Can all form fields be navigated and completed using keyboard-only navigation? Tab through the entire form and confirm every field, button, and dropdown is reachable and usable.
Does the site avoid CAPTCHAs that require visual identification without an accessible alternative? If a CAPTCHA is necessary, an audio or text-based alternative must be available.
Are buttons and interactive elements large enough to activate without accidentally triggering adjacent elements? This matters especially on mobile and for users with limited motor control.
Color and visual design
These items can be checked visually and with the free WebAIM Contrast Checker at webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker. Enter the foreground and background color values to see whether they meet the required ratio.
Does body text meet a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background? Light gray text on a white background is one of the most common failures.
Does large text — 18 point or larger, or 14 point bold — meet a contrast ratio of at least 3:1?
Do interactive elements like buttons, form fields, and focus indicators have sufficient contrast against surrounding content?
Does the site avoid using color as the only way to indicate required actions or convey important information?
Is text still readable when browser text size is increased to 200 percent? Try it in your browser settings and see whether the layout breaks or text becomes unreadable.
Documents and downloadable files
A quick check of the most-visited documents linked from your website:
Are PDFs created from real text rather than scanned images? Open the PDF and try to select text. If you can't select any text, it's a scanned image and will be inaccessible to screen readers.
Do downloadable files have descriptive names that identify their content? "2025-2026-family-handbook.pdf" is descriptive. "document1.pdf" is not.
Are Word documents and Google Docs structured with real heading styles rather than manually formatted text? Bold large text is not a heading. A heading style applied through the styles panel is.
For a complete document accessibility checklist, see PDF Accessibility for K–12 Districts →.
What to do with what you find
If you've worked through these items and found issues — which most districts will — the next step is prioritization, not panic.
Start with the issues that affect the most users on the most visited content. A missing alt text on the homepage affects more people than a missing alt text on a rarely-visited archive page. A form that can't be completed by keyboard affects every user who relies on keyboard navigation every time they try to enroll a student or contact the district.
Document what you find. A simple spreadsheet with the page, the issue type, and a priority rating is enough to start building a remediation plan. That documentation also serves as evidence of good-faith effort toward compliance — which matters if your district is ever asked to demonstrate what it's doing to meet ADA Title II requirements.
If this self-assessment surfaces more issues than your team can tackle independently, or if you want a complete picture that goes beyond what this checklist can catch, that's where a professional accessibility audit adds real value. A professional audit covers the full scope of WCAG Level AA requirements, includes manual testing that automated tools and visual checks can't replicate, and produces a prioritized remediation plan your team can act on.
The complete WCAG for K–12 Districts series
This post completes the six-part series on WCAG for K–12 districts. Here's the full series in order:
What Is WCAG? A Plain-Language Introduction for K–12 Leaders →
WCAG Levels Explained: What Level AA Actually Means for Your District →
WCAG 2.1 vs. WCAG 2.2: What Changed and What Your District Needs to Know →
The Four Principles of WCAG: What POUR Means in Plain Language →
A WCAG Self-Assessment Checklist for K–12 Districts: Where to Start (this post)
A starting point, not a finish line
This checklist gives your district a place to begin. It surfaces the most common, highest-impact accessibility barriers in the content types districts publish most — and it does so without requiring specialist tools or technical expertise.
What it can't do is give you the complete picture. A professional audit will find issues this checklist won't catch, evaluate content types and user flows this checklist doesn't cover, and give you a prioritized, defensible remediation plan rather than a self-generated spreadsheet.
If this checklist surfaced more than your team can tackle independently, or if you're ready to understand the full scope of what your district's content requires, that's exactly what an accessibility audit is for. It's not a judgment of where you are — it's a map for where to go.
Book a free 30-minute intro call →
Or explore accessibility audit and remediation services → to see what a professional WCAG evaluation looks like in practice.
Kalin Schoephoerster is a CPACC-certified instructional designer and accessibility consultant based in St. Paul, MN. KShep Creative partners with K–12 districts, higher education institutions, and EdTech organizations to develop accessible eLearning, instructor-led training, curriculum, SOPs, and website accessibility audits aligned with WCAG 2.2 and ADA Title II requirements.