A Community College: WCAG Compliance for a Diverse Student Population on a Community College Budget
13,000 students. 40% with documented disabilities or accommodations. An OCR Section 504 resolution agreement ticking down. An $80,000/year Sitecore quote that was never going to happen. Here's how the college hit the deadlines anyway.
13K
Students enrolled
40%
Students with disabilities or accommodations
5
Sites covered (main + 4 microsites)
$80K
Sitecore annual license avoided
Section 504 vs. Title II: Why Both Matter for Community Colleges
Two laws. One website. Higher education institutions like community colleges sit under both Section 504 and ADA Title II, and the distinction shapes how a compliance officer prioritizes work when the OCR clock starts.
Section 504 (Rehabilitation Act)
Applies because your college takes federal financial assistance. It prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities across all programs and services, digital ones included. The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) runs enforcement.
Enforcement mechanism: OCR complaints, voluntary resolution agreements, potential loss of federal funding
ADA Title II
Applies because community colleges are public entities, an arm of state government. DOJ's 2024 final rule locked WCAG 2.1 AA in as the technical standard. DOJ enforces it, and any student can file a complaint or sue directly.
Enforcement mechanism: DOJ complaints, consent decrees, private litigation, reputational harm
At the college, the Section 504 side had already fired. In 2024, a student with a visual impairment filed an OCR complaint. The claim: the college's course schedule PDF, published every semester as a 140-page image-only scan, was unreadable to screen readers. She couldn't research classes. She couldn't register without help. That's the fact pattern that ends up on OCR's desk.
The OCR Resolution Agreement Requirements
Here's what OCR put in writing. The dates aren't negotiable, and the college signed:
Name an ADA/504 Coordinator with digital accessibility in their job description. Publish name, phone, and email on the college website.
Publish an Accessibility Statement on the main site and every major program microsite. Include a working feedback channel so students can report barriers.
Give the student complainant an accessible course schedule. Every future schedule ships accessible from day one.
Finish an accessibility audit of the main site and all 4 program microsites. File a remediation plan with OCR.
Hit documented WCAG 2.1 AA conformance on the primary website and every program microsite.
Audit and remediate every public PDF on college websites. Train every staffer who publishes digital content.
Run annual accessibility reviews. Keep the Accessibility Statement current. Answer disability-related digital complaints within 30 days.
Why $80,000/Year Sitecore Was Not an Option
The IT director did the homework. Two peer institutions swore by Sitecore. Then the quote arrived. Roughly $80,000 a year in licensing for a college of that size, plus implementation on top. The community college funding formula had already squeezed the budget flat. This wasn't a hard conversation. It was a dead one.
The whole annual web budget was $24,000. That covered the existing CMS license, hosting, and a part-time web coordinator. Any new platform had to slot into that number and still deliver better compliance than what the college had.
WPPersona's Community College plan covers the main site plus up to 5 program microsites for $499/month, or $5,988/year. That left real money on the table for contracted remediation work on the PDF archive. The compliance officer didn't have to choose between the platform and the documents.
Annual web platform cost, side by side
7.5% of Sitecore
Community college web budget: $24,000/year, all-in. The Sitecore quote alone was over 3x that.
Student Population Diversity and Accessibility Design
40% of the college's 13,000 students had documented disabilities or worked with the Disability Services office. That's one of the highest rates among peer community colleges. Layer in a lot of first-generation students, English language learners, and working adults trying to register between shifts, and design decisions stop being abstract. They're about whether a mother of two can actually enroll her kid in a night class.
Those demographics shaped the build:
Students with visual impairments
Every page template got tested with NVDA and JAWS at launch. The course schedule left PDF form and moved to an accessible HTML table with sortable columns. Instructor office hours and tutoring schedules ship in the same tabular format.
Students with cognitive disabilities
Plain-language content rules apply to every program page. 8th-grade reading level for general-audience content. Navigation dropped from a 3-level dropdown to 2 levels max. The financial aid process broke into numbered steps with progress indicators.
English Language Learners
WPPersona's 100+ language support went live. Admissions, financial aid, and registration pages translate into the 8 primary languages spoken across the student body. The language selector sits in the header with a text label, not flag icons. Flags mean different things to different students, so they got cut.
Working adult students with low bandwidth
Core content trimmed for low-bandwidth loads. Decorative images compressed or gone. Course schedule available as accessible HTML, no PDF download. Mobile-first layout tested on the older Android devices that show up most in the analytics.
Outcomes and OCR Agreement Fulfillment
The college filed the 6-month OCR progress report on time. Here's what it showed:
- ADA/504 Coordinator named and published across the main site and all 5 microsites
- Accessibility Statements live on all 6 web properties with a working feedback form
- Course schedule now accessible HTML; the PDF version passes WPPersona scans as well
- Primary website and 4 microsites at WCAG 2.1 AA conformance per independent third-party audit
- All 42 staff across 6 departments who publish digital content completed training
- Document archive audit finished: 1,847 PDFs identified, 412 Critical and 589 High. 94% of Critical documents remediated inside the reporting window.
OCR accepted the 6-month report without asking for more work on the primary items. The 18-month deliverables are on track. Annual web platform cost: $5,988. That's 7.5% of the Sitecore quote the college was staring at a year earlier.
PDF archive triage after audit
94% of Critical remediated
1,847 public PDFs classified during the 6-month audit window across the main site and 4 program microsites.
Critical
412 (22%)
94% remediated in window
High
589 (32%)
Queued for the 18-month milestone
Moderate / Low
846 (46%)
Balance of the 1,847-document archive
Community College or Higher Ed Institution?
Your main site plus program microsites, with accessibility enforcement built in, for a fraction of what enterprise CMS licensing costs. That's what the Community College plan does.
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