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Accessibility Statement

Our commitment to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities.

Policy Statement

This policy provides established guidelines adopted by EmployAbility Nebraska, along with a detailed checklist of design considerations and helpful references. We've created this comprehensive resource to serve as a quick reference for design issues and to help users gain a broader understanding of disability and accessibility topics.

EmployAbility Nebraska has adopted Section 508 and W3C Web Accessibility Initiative standards and guidelines as our benchmark to meet the objectives of our universal accessibility policy. These standards represent the foundation of our commitment to providing accessible digital content for all users.

We embrace these standards and continually evaluate our site, increasing opportunities for all individuals to access information over the internet. Our accessibility design standards are integrated throughout our website and will continue to evolve as new technologies and opportunities emerge.

Our Commitment to Accessibility

EmployAbility Nebraska is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone and applying the relevant accessibility standards to make our website and services accessible to all users, regardless of ability.

We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and we are dedicated to providing a website that is accessible to the broadest possible audience, regardless of ability.

Compliance Status

To fulfill our commitment, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.

Our website utilizes various technologies that are designed to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We employ an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website's UI (user interface) and design it to meet their individual needs.

Additionally, our website employs an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level continuously. This application remedies the website's HTML, adapts its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.

Nebraska Accessibility Requirements

The Nebraska IT Commission Accessibility Policy requires that information and communication technology (ICT) developed, maintained, or used by state agencies shall conform to Revised 508 Standards, with compliance with WCAG 2.1 strongly recommended.

Furthermore, Nebraska law ensures that all persons within the state are entitled to full and equal enjoyment of any place of public accommodation without discrimination or segregation on the grounds of disability, among other protected characteristics.

As a service committed to helping Nebraskans with disabilities find meaningful employment, we hold ourselves to these accessibility standards and continuously work to improve accessibility beyond minimum requirements.

Screen-Reader and Keyboard Navigation

Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers can read, comprehend, and enjoy the website's functions.

As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters our site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate our site effectively. Here's how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements:

Screen-reader optimization:

We run a background process that learns the website's components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes.

  • Accurate form labels
  • Descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, etc.)
  • Validation guidance for form inputs
  • Element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others

Additionally, the background process scans all of the website's images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts embedded within the image using OCR (optical character recognition) technology.

Keyboard navigation optimization:

The background process also adjusts the website's HTML and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes:

  • Ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys
  • Operating dropdowns with the arrow keys
  • Closing them with Esc
  • Triggering buttons and links using the Enter key
  • Navigating between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys
  • Filling them in with the Spacebar or Enter key

Additionally, keyboard users will find content-skip menus available at any time by clicking Alt+2, or as the first element of the site while navigating with the keyboard.

Disability Profiles Supported on Our Website

Epilepsy Safe Profile:

This profile enables people with epilepsy to safely use the website by eliminating the risk of seizures resulting from flashing or blinking animations and risky color combinations.

Vision Impaired Profile:

This profile adjusts the website so that it is accessible to the majority of visual impairments such as Degrading Eyesight, Tunnel Vision, Cataract, Glaucoma, and others.

Cognitive Disability Profile:

This profile provides various assistive features to help users with cognitive disabilities such as Autism, Dyslexia, CVA, and others, to focus on the essential elements more easily.

ADHD Friendly Profile:

This profile significantly reduces distractions and noise to help people with ADHD and neurodevelopmental disorders browse, read, and focus on the essential elements more easily.

Blind Users Profile (Screen-readers):

This profile adjusts the website to be compatible with screen-readers such as JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, and TalkBack. A screen-reader is software for blind users that is installed on a computer and smartphone, and our website is compatible with it.

Keyboard Navigation Profile (Motor-Impaired):

This profile enables motor-impaired persons to operate the website using the keyboard Tab, Shift+Tab, and the Enter keys. Users can also use shortcuts such as "M" (menus), "H" (headings), "F" (forms), "B" (buttons), and "G" (graphics) to jump to specific elements.

Additional UI, Design, and Readability Adjustments

Font adjustments

Users can increase and decrease font size, change its family (type), adjust the spacing, alignment, line height, and more.

Color adjustments

Users can select various color contrast profiles such as light, dark, inverted, and monochrome. Additionally, users can swap color schemes of titles, texts, and backgrounds.

Animations

Epileptic users can stop all running animations with the click of a button. Animations controlled by the interface include videos, GIFs, and CSS flashing transitions.

Content highlighting

Users can choose to emphasize essential elements such as links and titles. They can also choose to highlight focused or hovered elements only.

Audio muting

Users with hearing devices may experience headaches or other issues due to automatic audio playing. This option lets users mute the entire website instantly.

Cognitive disorders

We utilize a search engine linked to Wikipedia and Wiktionary, allowing people with cognitive disorders to decipher meanings of phrases, initials, slang, and others.

Assistive Technology and Browser Compatibility

We aim to support as many browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share, including:

  • Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge
  • JAWS and NVDA screen readers (for Windows)
  • VoiceOver and TalkBack screen readers (for MAC/iOS and Android respectively)

Design Considerations

EmployAbility Nebraska has implemented a comprehensive set of design considerations to ensure maximum accessibility. The following list provides a summary of the design practices we follow when creating and maintaining our website:

Universal Design

  • Maintaining a consistent page layout throughout the site
  • Using plain backgrounds and simple layouts to improve text readability
  • Including both textual and graphical navigation aids
  • Using fully spelled out dates (e.g., December 1, 2024 rather than 12/1/24)
  • Testing our pages with various web browsers, including with images turned off
  • Limiting the use of HTML tags or extensions supported by only one browser
  • Providing text descriptions for downloadable files that include the file type

Text-Based Design

  • Using proper punctuation at the end of all sentences, headers, and list items
  • Limiting side-by-side presentation of text in columns and tables
  • Minimizing the number of hyperlinks in a single line of text
  • Using vertical lists for links wherever possible
  • Providing meaningful and descriptive text for hyperlinks instead of vague phrases like "click here"
  • Including descriptive identifiers at the beginning of lists to explain what the list represents
  • Providing HTML or text alternatives when documents are in specialized formats (e.g., PDF)

Graphics and Images

  • Keeping the number of colors in images to a minimum
  • Minimizing file size and number of images on any one page
  • Ensuring text can always be clearly read against backgrounds
  • Using ALT text for all images, pictures, and graphical bullets
  • Providing hyperlinks to descriptions for complex images when necessary
  • Using simple characters for bullets in ALT text fields

Audio/Video Features

  • Providing text transcriptions or descriptions for all video clips
  • Including captions or text tracks with descriptions of sounds in multimedia
  • Offering descriptive passages about speakers and events shown in videos
  • Providing written descriptions of critical information contained in audio files
  • Informing users of audio file formats and sizes when linking directly to audio
  • Including instructions for using newer technologies like RSS feeds, along with alternative text-based options

Technical Standards

  • Designing pages to avoid screen flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz
  • Providing methods to skip repetitive navigation links
  • Using client-side image maps whenever possible instead of server-side image maps
  • Providing proper identification of row and column headers in data tables
  • Ensuring pages are usable when scripts are turned off or not supported
  • Using descriptive, intuitive text links and avoiding vague references

Additional Resources

For those interested in learning more about web accessibility, we recommend these valuable resources:

Universal Web Accessibility Guidelines

A comprehensive reference for designing universally accessible websites.

Visit Resource

JavaScript Accessibility Techniques

Guidelines for creating accessible JavaScript applications and features.

Visit Resource

Writing for Web Accessibility

Tips for writing accessible web content from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.

Visit Resource

DO-IT Center

Resources from Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking & Technology at the University of Washington.

Visit Resource

Adobe Accessibility Resource Center

Guidance on accessibility issues for Adobe products including Acrobat and PDFs.

Visit Resource

Nebraska IT Commission Accessibility Standards

Official Nebraska state standards for web accessibility.

Visit Resource

Notes, Comments, and Feedback

Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible.

We are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating, and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility following technological advancements.

If you wish to contact EmployAbility Nebraska regarding accessibility issues or have suggestions for improvement, please use the following email address: accessibility@employabilitynebraska.org

Grievance Procedure

EmployAbility Nebraska has adopted the following grievance procedure to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and/or the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA). It is intended to provide prompt and equitable resolution of complaints alleging any violation of the ADA/ADAAA by reason of employment practices and policies or the provision of services, activities, programs, and benefits.

  1. Filing a Complaint: The complaint should be in writing and contain information about the alleged discrimination such as name, address, phone number of complainant and location, date, and description of the problem. Alternative means of filing complaints, such as personal interviews or a recording of the complaint, will be made available for persons with disabilities upon request.
  2. Submission: The complaint should be submitted by the grievant and/or their designee as soon as possible but no later than 60 calendar days after the alleged violation to:

    ADA Coordinator
    EmployAbility Nebraska
    123 Main Street
    Lincoln, NE 68508
    Email: ada@employabilitynebraska.org

  3. Meeting: Within 15 calendar days after receipt of the complaint, the ADA Coordinator or their designee will meet with the complainant to discuss the complaint and the possible resolutions.
  4. Response: Within 15 calendar days of the meeting, the ADA Coordinator or their designee will respond in writing, and where appropriate, in a format accessible to the complainant, such as large print, Braille, or audio recording. The response will explain the position of EmployAbility Nebraska and offer options for substantive resolution of the complaint.
  5. Appeal: If the response by the ADA Coordinator or their designee does not satisfactorily resolve the issue, the complainant and/or their designee may appeal the decision within 15 calendar days after receipt of the response to the Executive Director or their designee.
  6. Final Determination: Within 15 calendar days after receipt of the appeal, the Executive Director or their designee will meet with the complainant to discuss the appeal and possible resolutions. Within 15 calendar days after the meeting, the Executive Director or their designee will respond in writing, and, where appropriate, in a format accessible to the complainant, with a final resolution of the complaint.

All written complaints received by the ADA Coordinator or their designee, appeals to the Executive Director or their designee, and responses from these two offices will be retained by EmployAbility Nebraska for at least three years.