Help

My Sites Help

The My Sites list page lists the the sites that your organization manages, our grade for each site, a synopsis of the site's accessibility, when we last scanned the site and the site's service level. One of the sites listed will be the active site, and will have a control bar with a set of buttons on it:

• The Broken Links button will bring up a summary of all the broken links we found on your site. This button appears if we have completed a link check of your site.
• Section 508 presents a report of how well your site complies with the federal Section 508 rules. This button appears once we've scanned your site.
• WCAG-2 presents a report of how well your site complies with version 2.0 of W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This button appears once we've scanned your site.
• The Site Info button provides you with information about your site, enables you to edit your contact information, recalculate your scores and get downloadable reports
• The Help button ? is used to access these help files

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Report Card Help

The Section 508 and WCAG-2 report cards each display specific areas that you may need to address. If our scans detected a problem in that area, we show a percentage indicating how much of your site the problem affects. The percentage is a link you can follow to a summary of problems we found on your site for that area.

From the summary, you can list the specific pages affected, and in the case of problems with images, view the images that cause a problem. You can view the images in context, and also look at the HTML code for the problem, enabling you to see the exact problem you need to fix.

Once you've fixed the problem, or have looked at the issue and determined it doesn't really present an accessibility problem, you can create an "Exemption" for that issue by using the Exemption icon for that issue. Once an exemption has been made, the icon changes to indicate an exemption is in effect.

Some checkpoints require manual review of your site. These are indicated on the reportcard with an Exemption icon, and the notation that the issue requires review. Use the Exemption icon to find out what is required, and if applicable, confirm that you are in compliance with the checkpoint.

WCAG

The WCAG reportcard is divided up into a number of guidelines by accessibility principle, with a number of Success Criteria under each guideline. Each Success Criterion has a conformance level ranging from "A" to "AAA"; in general, Level A criteria are absolutely essential to make your site accessible, higher levels indicate criteria that make your site easier to use for people with disabilities, but may be harder to achieve.

• Text Alternatives: All information on your site needs to be conveyable in text. If you have non-text content (images, movies, sounds), then you need to provide a text alternative for people who cannot use the non-text content.
• Time-based Media: Time-based Media refers to movies and sound clips. These Success Criteria are aimed at making them more accessible.
• Adaptable: Some people will be using your site via adaptive technology. These Success Criteria ensure that the information is present for adaptive technology to properly present your content to the user.
• Distinguishable: These Success Criteria ensure that your site is still usable, even if the user has visual or auditory problems such as color blindness .
• Keyboard Accessible: Not all users can use a mouse or touch interface. These Success Criteria check to make sure the site is usable with a keyboard.
• Enough Time: These Success Criteria test that users have enough time to complete their tasks on your site.
• Seizures: These Success Criteria are aimed at making sure your design doesn't provoke seizures.
• Navigable: While your site may be easily navigable if you can see and can handle a mouse, these criteria make sure the site is still usable for people who cannot.
• Readable: These criteria are aimed at ensuring there is enough information in the document to enable adaptive technology to read the document to the user.
• Predictable: These criteria are aimed at ensuring your site behaves in a consistent and predictable way. People with cognitive disabilities may be confused by your site if the site behaves in unpredictable ways, or performs actions by itself.
• Input Assistance: These criteria are concerned with making sure the user can handle data entry as easily as possible; that errors are communicated clearly back to the user, and that the user can correct errors.
• Compatible: These criteria check whether the site follows current standards.

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Broken Links Report Help

The Broken link report shows you a summary of the different types of broken links we found on your site.

By using the "Report" button on the summary, you'll get a list of the specific pages where we found problems, and can view the broken links in context, or view the HTML source of the link. Broken links can be both actual links (<A> tags) or things like images or style sheet references that are broken.

When viewing the links in context, we attempt to highlight the broken resource to make it more visible to the viewer.

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Site Info Help

The Site info area appears when you use the Site Info button, and provides information about the site, enables you to create a downloadable Compliance Report or Summary, recalculate your accessibility score and update the contact information for your site.

Grade Section

The section shows your site's grade, and current level of accessibility. From here you can create downloadable PDF versions of your Compliance Report and Summary; once the reports have been generated, you'll find links to download them here.

Once you start fixing your site, or if you determine that some issues don't apply, you can create exemptions for the issues. The exemptions don't count toward your grade until your compliance score has been recalculated; use the link here to do so.

Scans

If you are eligible to request a new scan of your site, use the New Scan button to request a new scan. The scan request will be queued and be run according to our automated schedules. If you are not eligible, this button will be disabled. If you have a scan being run, a progress bar will appear indicating how far along it is.

Site Users

Using the Site Users button brings up an overlay showing your organization's members. Use this listing to restrict certain users to a particular site.

Site & Contact Details

Use this section to update the site's Accessibility Officer's contact information. When creating a new site, here is where you would enter the site domain name as well. The About Site field is used to provide information about your site to visitors who use the link on your BOIA Site Seal.

Verification Meta Tag

In order to prevent abuse, we need to determine that you have authority to make changes to the site. One way we do this is by requesting that you place a certain <meta> tag in the <head> of your home page. You'll find the code here in the Verification Meta Tag section. We will check for the meta tag, and once we find it, we know that you have authority over the site, and will let you know that the site has been verified.

Once the site has been verified, you'll still find the verify tag used here as a reference, with the notation that the site has been verified.

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BOIA.org Seal Awards

BOIA.org awards a certain Image Seal to a website after it has been scanned for accessibility. After the results of the BOIA scan are known and calculated, an appropriate seal image will be available for inclusion into your website.

The BOIA seal indicates to your visitors that you are actively aware of Internet Accessibility needs and are actively part of a program that helps resolve such issues by providing web masters with the tools and information to improve their web site for better consumption by alternative web page browsers/readers.

There are two main image seals: Participant and Member

Participant Seal:

Organizations that register in the BOIA program are provided a participant seal that can be displayed on their web site. This seal tells the public that the company is aware of accessibility concerns and are interested in pursuing accessibility on their website. These companies have all the tools and information available to them for free to keep informed and fix any accessibility issues that the BOIA finds on their web site. Additionally, if a visitor has any accessibility concerns, they can address them directly with the accesibility contact personnel of the website company.

Member Seal:

Organizations may be invited into the Member Seal program after they are signed up as a participant in good standing. Organization web sites that are part of the BOIA Member program have a different BOIA Image Seal to display on their web site. The Member Seal Is always date-stamped with the awarded BOIA acessibility grade and scan date.

The Member Seal tells the public that your web site is actively pursuing any accessibility related issues and would like the Internet community to see on a regular basis how accessible their web site is.

BOIA members have all the tools and information available to them and their site is scanned for issues more frequently.

Using a BOIA Image Seal

A BOIA Image Seal is a good thing to display on your web pages. Any assigned BOIA seal should be displayed prominently on every page of your website that is publicly available and scanned for accessibility concerns.

To have your seal appear on your web pages, just copy and paste some simple code provided on your Site Info area. After using the Site Info button, expand the Seal Image Link section and copy and paste the code into each of your web pages or into each dynamic web page file so that it appears consistently in one of the visible four corners of each web page or centered at the foot of each web page.

The pasted code does not have to change when or if your site seal image changes.

After the code is placed on your site, the appropriate BOIA Site Seal will appear and provide a link for visitors to view a breakdown of your site's accessibility award and the efforts taken to make the grade. Visitors may also be invited to comment on your website with regard to the accessibility grading or site-seal with BOIA.org.

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