School platform accessibility checks before buying

Why should a school check a platform's accessibility?

Because a school platform is used by everyone in the school community: teachers, students, parents and administrators, some of whom have a disability or need larger text, a keyboard instead of a mouse, or captions. If a screen cannot be used that way, that person is left out of the task. This guide is for school leaders and administrators choosing a platform; accessibility is one part of evaluating a school platform before you buy.

About one person in six lives with a significant disability. The World Health Organization's disability fact sheet (7 March 2023) says: “An estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world's population, or 1 in 6 of us.” The WHO figure is a global estimate, not a count for any one school.

Older people count as users too, and so do students. The W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative, in its guide to involving users, names “people with disabilities and older people with accessibility needs due to aging”, and notes that the people with disabilities a site serves include “your customers, clients, employees, students, and others”.

A schools standard puts accessibility into buying. The UK Department for Education's digital accessibility standard, written for schools and colleges in England, asks schools to “Work with students, staff and parents to identify their digital accessibility needs”, and says that if current hardware and software lack accessibility features, “you will need to make sure they are included when you buy new equipment or services.” What parents should be able to see is covered in what parents should see in a school platform.

Which accessibility standard should a school ask for?

Ask for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.2, at Level AA. WCAG is the W3C's international standard for accessible web content, and Level AA is the practical level to ask for: WCAG 2.2 itself advises against requiring the top level, AAA, as a general policy for entire sites. Ask the vendor to say in writing which version and level the platform meets, and for which parts of it.

WCAG 2.2 is the current version. The WCAG 2.2 standard is a W3C Recommendation dated 12 December 2024. The W3C's WCAG overview says: “The WCAG 2.2 has 13 guidelines. The guidelines are organized under 4 principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.” Each guideline has testable success criteria “at three levels: A, AA, and AAA”, and “Content that meets WCAG 2.2 also meets WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.0.”

Level AA means every Level A and Level AA criterion is met. WCAG 2.2 says: “For Level AA conformance, the web page satisfies all the Level A and Level AA success criteria, or a Level AA conforming alternate version is provided.” WCAG 2.2 adds that it is “not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA success criteria for some content.”

The W3C's overview says the October 2023 version of WCAG 2.2 is also published as an ISO standard, ISO/IEC 40500:2025, and that WCAG “can also be applied to non-web information and communications technologies (ICT) such as native apps, software, and documents”, so a school can ask the same question about a platform's mobile app.

What written evidence should the vendor provide?

Ask for two documents: an Accessibility Conformance Report, which records how the product was tested against the standard, and an accessibility statement, which tells users what works, what does not yet, and whom to contact. Check the date, which screens and apps were tested, and the known limitations, because a report on an older version or on the website alone says little about the platform the school will use.

An Accessibility Conformance Report is a completed VPAT. The Information Technology Industry Council's VPAT page says the template “translates accessibility requirements and standards (e.g., in Section 508 and other legal frameworks) into actionable testing criteria for products and services”, and that “Once completed, the VPAT® with documented testing results is referred to as an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) that details the accessible features of the tested product or service.” Its current editions are VPAT 2.5Rev (April 2025), including an INT edition. The report is the vendor's own: the council's page says “No, ITI does not review or approve VPATs.”

An accessibility statement names the standard, the contact and the gaps. The W3C's guide to accessibility statements says one should contain at least “A commitment to accessibility for people with disabilities”, “The accessibility standard applied, such as WCAG 2.2” and “Contact information in case users encounter problems”. The W3C guide also advises adding “Any known limitations, to avoid frustration of your users” and the “Environments in which the content has been tested to work”.

No report, or an old one, is an answer too. Our practical suggestion: if a vendor has no report, or one written for an earlier version of the product or of WCAG, ask what has changed and which WCAG 2.2 criteria are not yet covered, rely more on the demo checks and the pilot below, and write the gap into the contract. The UK standard also advises schools with specific accessibility requirements to ask suppliers “about their products and services accessibility statements”.

Ask for these alongside the other written answers in the questions to ask in a school platform demo.

What can a school check itself in a demo?

Ask to drive the demo yourself and try the everyday tasks with the keyboard alone, with the text enlarged, and on a phone. Look for a visible focus marker, labels on every form field, enough contrast, captions on videos and a sign-in that does not depend on remembering or solving something without help. Each check below maps to one WCAG 2.2 success criterion, so a failure can be named precisely.

Quick checks find problems; they do not prove a platform is accessible. The W3C's Easy Checks page says: “These checks cover just a few accessibility issues and are designed to be quick and easy, rather than exhaustive. A web page could seem to pass these checks, yet still have significant accessibility barriers.” Who should see which screen, role by role, is in the guide to evaluating teacher, student, parent and administrator access.

Who should test the platform before the school decides?

Ask a few people from your own school community who use assistive technology or have access needs, such as a teacher, a student and a parent, to try the tasks they would really do, and write down where they get stuck. A report and a checklist show whether the rules are met; people show whether the platform can be used.

W3C advises involving people with disabilities early, not at the end. Its guide to involving users says: “Involving users early in projects helps you understand real-world accessibility issues, such as how people with disabilities and older people use the web”, and “Involving users early helps you implement more effective accessibility solutions.” The W3C guide is written for teams building websites; for a school, the earliest moment it controls is the demo and the pilot. Our suggestion: include at least one tester who uses a screen reader, and ask the vendor to confirm the platform is set up to work with the assistive technology the school already uses.

A short pilot before buying is the natural place for this, with the same tasks tried by every role.

What should go into the pilot and the contract?

In the pilot, record which tasks each role tried, where testers got stuck, and what the vendor agreed to fix before signing. Then write the accessibility answer down where it can be checked later: the standard and level the vendor says the platform meets, the date of its conformance report, the known limitations, how users report an accessibility problem, and how and when the vendor responds.

Our practical suggestion: put the named standard in the contract. “Accessible” on its own cannot be checked; “WCAG 2.2 Level AA” can, criterion by criterion. Ask that the accessibility statement be easy to find; the W3C's statements guide says “Accessibility statements should be easy to find”, linked from places such as “the footer, help menu, sitemap, about page”.

The other terms to settle before signing are in the school platform contract checklist.