Harper College
Harper Web Team

Web Accessibility

The Harper College Web Team is working to ensure sitewide compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards for accessibility by the April 24, 2026 deadline. To support this goal, the Web Team has undertaken the following initiatives:

Sitewide content audit

The Harper Web Team is currently reviewing all 5000+ webpages, and 5000-8000 documents that are part of the public website. Additionally, the Web Team is reviewing externally hosted vendor portals and content that is embedded in our website from external sources. The goals of this project is to identify all outstanding accessibility issues so they can be addressed. As part of this process, the Harper Web Team will also be enforcing more strict compliance to the standard template and may reformat your pages for accessibility compliance. Learn more about the Content Audit.

New procedures on PDFs

While there are many aspects to compliance, one particularly problematic area is PDFs. Making PDFs compliant can be a very difficult, time-consuming and potentially expensive process. In order to ensure that each PDF posted to the Harper College website is compliant, the Web Team will institute the following new procedures:

  • Modern Campus CMS users will no longer be able to directly upload PDFs as of December 15, 2025.
  • To post a PDF, please submit it through the Web Request form.
  • After a Web Request is received, the Web Team will review and remediate the PDF, if possible.
  • Please allow up to 10 business days for this process to be completed. 
  • If there are any issues with remediating the document, the Web Team will follow up with next steps.

Because PDFs are so problematic for accessibility, please consider using alternatives formats, such as Word or PowerPoint documents, or migrating the information to a standard web page. Please note that all documents regardless of format will need to be WCAG compliant — not just PDFs. 

Training Sessions

The Harper Web Team is offering two accessibility training sessions for Harper employees: "Make Your Documents More Accessible" and "Accessibility Spot Check". These sessions will cover formatting documents for accessibility and how to do a quick check to ensure that your webpages, documents, applications and vendor portals are accessible. These will be offered throughout the Spring 2026 semester. RSVP for a training

Frequently asked questions

No, the Web Team will be reviewing all documents on the Harper website as part of its ongoing Content Audit project.

  • Review your webpages. Remove un-necessary or out-of-date web pages, PDFs or other documents, or other out-of-date information.
  • Format your webpage for accessibility. The formatting principles outlined in Accessibility Quick Tips for Microsoft Word (Harper OneDrive login required) also apply to web pages.
  • Avoid PDFs. PDFs are very problematic for accessibility. If you can, please use Microsoft documents (Word/Excel/PowerPoint) or consider migrating the information to a standard web page. These documents will also need to be WCAG compliant, but the accessibility issues in these formats are often easier to fix.

Additional Resources

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Patrick Kelly, Web Content Manager, pkelly@harpercollege.edu.

Last Updated: 12/17/25