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Dean's Office College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Mitigating accessibility issues after Mercury Migration

By April 26, 2027, all websites, website-based applications, and mobile applications must meet accessibility guidelines for WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 level A/AA. As a unit that has been migrated to the Mercury theme, you have mitigation tools available to you for immediate and ongoing compliance.

Our goal is not perfection—our goal is continual progress toward accessibility for all.

On this page:

File Mitigation

In addition to web pages, all files (PDFs, Word docs, etc.) must meet accessibility guidelines. If you are responsible for a unit website in the CLAS WordPress ecosystem, a media report has been provided by Media Services.

(If you have not yet received one, you may click here to request a media report.)

Follow the instructions below and in the accompanying videos.

Finding PDFs and Docs to mitigate using your References file.

  • Open your “references.csv” report provided by Media Services.
    • Filter for .pdf and .docx
    • Exclude post_content
    • If you find syllabi in your listing, ignore them for the purpose of mitigation. Please reach out to commsupport@clas.ufl.edu to have them removed and replaced with Simple Syllabus or Syllabus archive links. (Note that your “pre-mercury” sites are still available for your reference with past syllabi intact.)

Decide Which Files to Keep

  • Determine which files are truly important to have on your site, which can be removed, and which can be repurposed as web pages.
    • Fillable PDF forms:
      • This is an advanced task that requires an Adobe Acrobat license. You may want to consider other options for gathering form data such as Microsoft forms, Qualtrics, or Docusign.
    • Complex layered PDFs with graphics:
      • See the Ultimate Guide to Accessible PDFs on LinkedIn Learning.
      • Consider converting the document to a web page using accessibility-ready Mercury blocks. As long as all the elements in the PDF are also represented on the web page, you can post your PDF as a flattened image with appropriate alt tags and even link to the PDF for printing purposes only.

Mitigating Files for Accessibility

  • For those that must remain docs or PDFs, follow the instructions for mitigation:
    • Check your PDF for compliance
      • Go to Siteimprove > Accessibility > PDFs > PDF Audit
      • Search for your filename and check if it is machine readable, has tags, or has other is issues. If any issues exist, you need to mitigate it using the instructions in the next step.
      • Have .docx files that you can’t check in Siteimprove? Assume it is not compliant and skip to the next step
      • Don’t have a Siteimprove scan yet? Assume your files are not compliant and skip to the next step. If you are faculty, you also have access to Adobe Acrobat for scanning your file (request Adobe Acrobat here).
    • Making standard black and white documents compliant using Microsoft Word (recommended):
      • Open in Microsoft word (even if it’s a PDF)
      • Give the document a title (File > Properties > Summary)
      • Mitigate issues within the file:
      • If you want to post as a word file, simply Save it.
      • If you want to post as a PDF, save as a PDF for electronic distribution and accessibility.
    • Other PDF and Word doc mitigation tools:
    • Repost to your media library, link to it from your website in place of the original, and remove the original from the Media library.

Siteimprove for Units

Siteimprove is a tool for making your site’s page content accessible. If you are responsible for a unit website in the CLAS WordPress ecosystem, you have been provided Siteimprove credentials.

Follow the instructions in below and in the video shown here.

  1. Log in to https://my2.siteimprove.com/
    • Land on dashboard and select Site (CLAS will be the only one available)
    • If you only have access to one Group (your unit) then it will appear automatically. Otherwise you will need to select your unit from the Group dropdown.
    • NOTE: If you are unable to log in, you may request credentials or use the free Siteimprove tool that is publicly available.
  2. Go to Accessibility Overview
    • Click on View Score Breakdown
    • Address A and AA issues
    • Ignore AAA, ARIA, and S issues
    • NOTE: if you have been addressing issues using the publicly available Siteimprove tool, your scan in this version of Siteimprove may be outdated. If you believe you have fixed an issue, rescan your page individually.
  3. Make changes as suggested and refresh to clear the issue
    • The issues will appear in green once fixed
    • Note: your overall score will not change until CLAS Media Services runs a monthly scan
Screenshot of Siteimprove
Click the video above for a guide through these instructions

Adding Alt Tags Automatically

We are in the process of removing unused media files from your site; when this is done, you will be provided a tool to generate alt tags for your images automatically.

(If you do not see the Alt Text tool on your website, you may click here to request it.)

Follow the instructions below and in the video shown here.

  • In your WordPress dashboard, go to Media > Alt Text > Dashboard > Scan site > Select All > Generate for selected 
  • You may have multiple pages to generate alt text for so continue until you’re done 
screen showing alt text tool
Click the video above for a guide through these instructions