CoSN’s Journey to Digital Accessibility: Leading by Example in EdTech
As the premier professional association for K-12 EdTech leaders, CoSN has always been committed to empowering every learner to achieve their unique potential in a changing world. This mission has taken on new meaning as we embarked on our own digital accessibility transformation journey. Serving over 2,050 school districts and reaching more than 11 million students, we recognized our responsibility to lead by example in making educational technology accessible to all.
The importance of digital accessibility in education cannot be overstated. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2023), during the 2022-23 school year, 15.2 percent of all students nationwide were enrolled in special education programs, marking the highest percentage in 47 years. This statistic underscores the critical need for accessible digital resources in education, a need that aligns perfectly with CoSN’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Our transformation began with a comprehensive accessibility audit that revealed both challenges and opportunities. While we have always strived to serve our community effectively, the audit highlighted areas where we could enhance our digital presence to better serve all users. This insight led to a structured approach to improving accessibility across our website.
Improving the CoSN Website with Accessibility in Mind
One of our first major initiatives focused on implementing proper heading structure throughout our website. Working within our WordPress environment, we completely reorganized our content hierarchy to ensure a logical and accessible structure.
Understanding heading structure is crucial for accessibility. Think of headings as an outline for your content:
- H1 is your main page title—there should only be one per page
- H2s are your major section headings
- H3s are subsections within your H2 sections
- H4s, H5s, and H6s provide further organization when needed
For screen reader users, proper heading structure is essential for understanding and navigating content. When we audited our site, we found instances where headings were chosen for their visual appearance rather than their hierarchical meaning. Our team worked methodically to restructure our content, ensuring that headings followed a logical progression (never skipping levels, such as jumping from H2 to H4) while maintaining visual appeal through proper styling rather than incorrect heading levels.
Enhanced Visual Accessibility
Working within CoSN’s established design system, we focused on optimizing how our existing visual elements were applied to enhance accessibility:
- Color Implementation: While maintaining our brand color palette, we refined how these colors were applied across the site. We ensured sufficient contrast ratios between text and backgrounds, particularly for critical elements such as navigation and calls to action.
- Button Optimization: We reviewed our existing button styles and focused on improving their usability. This included:
- Streamlining button text to be more concise and action-oriented
- Removing unnecessary decorative icons that didn’t add meaning
- Ensuring consistent styling for better recognition
- Maintaining our established button designs while improving their implementation
- Typography Application: Working with our existing typefaces, we focused on proper implementation for readability:
- Consistent text sizing for better hierarchy
- Appropriate line spacing and paragraph breaks
- Proper contrast for all text elements
- Clear distinction between different types of content
These refinements weren’t about changing our visual identity. Instead, they focused on implementing our existing design system in ways that enhance accessibility while maintaining CoSN’s professional appearance.
Navigation Improvements
Understanding that clear navigation is crucial for all users, we began our improvements with the website footer. This restructuring focused on creating more logical organization and clearer pathways to key resources. The enhanced footer navigation now provides better accessibility for all users, including those using screen readers or keyboard navigation. This represents our first step in a broader plan to improve navigation accessibility across our entire website.
Impact and Looking Forward
The initial impact of these changes has been encouraging. Users are finding it easier to navigate our resources, and we’re seeing improved engagement with our content. However, we recognize that digital accessibility is not a destination but a journey. We’re continuing to work on several initiatives, including:
- Enhancing the accessibility of our PDF resources
- Developing comprehensive document accessibility guidelines
- Implementing regular accessibility audits and updates
Lessons Learned
Through this process, we’ve gained valuable insights that we’re eager to share with our community:
- Start with a comprehensive audit to understand your current accessibility landscape
- Implement changes in phases to ensure thorough testing and validation
- Keep your team informed and involved in the accessibility journey
- Regular testing and feedback are crucial for maintaining accessibility standards
Moving Forward Together
Digital accessibility is not a checkbox to mark off – it’s an ongoing commitment to ensuring that educational technology serves all learners. At CoSN, our journey to enhance accessibility across our digital platforms has reinforced what we’ve always known: Meaningful change happens through community effort and continuous improvement.
Our recent improvements to the CoSN website represent just the beginning of our accessibility journey. From restructuring our content hierarchy to optimizing our visual elements, each step has been taken with our diverse community in mind. These changes reflect our deeper belief that accessibility isn’t just about compliance—it’s about creating an educational technology environment where every student, teacher, and administrator can fully participate and succeed.
As we look ahead, we remain committed to not only improving our own digital accessibility but also to supporting our members in their accessibility journeys. Whether you’re just starting to consider accessibility improvements or are well along your path, CoSN is working hard to be able to provide the resources, community, and support you need to make educational technology accessible to all.
We invite you to join us in this vital work. Together, we can create a more inclusive digital learning environment that truly serves every member of our educational community. Because when we make technology accessible to all, we empower every learner to achieve their unique potential in our changing world.
If you encounter anything on our website or resources that impedes your ability to fully access our content, we want to hear from you—and will do our best to accommodate your needs. Please reach out to Michael Nehmer at mnehmer@cosn.org.
