A web accessibility assessment ensures your new website or redesign meets accessibility requirements. You should request a web accessibility assessment as early as possible as the Digital Accessibility Office (DAO) can assist throughout the design and development process. Our goal is to ensure your web project includes accessibility from the beginning. We also recommend attending our Digital Accessibility Awareness and Web Accessibility Basics trainings to learn best practices and current guidelines.
Step 1: Initiate evaluation
- Review the resources available on our website to ensure you’ve addressed common accessibility barriers.
- Submit an online help request to the Digital Accessibility Office (DAO).
- A DAO consultant will reach out to confirm your request and provide an estimated completion time (usually 3-7 business days).
- Your evaluation report will include a list of issues that must be fixed to comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 Level AA, following the UNC Digital Accessibility Standards. This includes suggestions to enhance usability for everyone.
Step 2: Revision period
- A meeting will be scheduled to review the report, address your questions and discuss potential solutions.
- Allocate ample time for revisions — depending on website size, compliance and developer familiarity, remediation may take days or weeks.
- Don’t forget to explore the Toolbox for additional testing or revision support.
- Once revisions are complete, reach out to your DAO consultant for a final evaluation.
Step 3: Domain approval (if seeking top level unc.edu domain)
- You must request a UNC top level subdomain. A list of current subdomain names and contact information appears on the Domain Requests web site.
- If you are building your site on tarheels.live your DAO consultant will notify Digital Services once your website is in compliance.
- Digital Services will work with you to finalize the domain switch.
- The Digital Accessibility Office (DAO) will add your site to Siteimprove for regular accessibility scans.