Accessibility

At UC Irvine, we are committed to ensuring that all members of our community—students, faculty, staff, and visitors—can access our digital resources. Accessibility compliance is both a legal requirement and essential to our values. Faculty Websites (faculty.sites.uci.edu) provides a hosting platform that is designed to support accessibility standards. However, content creators are responsible for ensuring that the content they publish meets accessibility requirements.

Beginning on April 24, 2026, all university websites are required to be fully accessible in accordance with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) final ruling on Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Making Your Site Accessible

While our platform provides the foundation for accessible websites, there are important steps you need to take to ensure your content is compliant:

Key Areas to Address:

Images: Add descriptive alt text to all images
Headings: Use proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
Links: Write clear, descriptive link text
Color Contrast: Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background
Documents: Make PDFs and other documents accessible
Videos: Include captions and transcripts
Forms: Properly label all form fields

Recommended Themes

Faculty Websites uses CampusPress Flex by default, which is designed with accessibility in mind and meets WCAG standards. The default WordPress themes such as Twenty Twenty-Five, Twenty Twenty-Four, and other recent Twenty-series themes are also built to be accessible and compliant with ADA requirements.

Divi Theme

If you’re using Divi, we recommend enabling the Divi Accessibility Plugin, which was specifically created to enhance Divi’s accessibility features. While Divi can be made accessible with the proper plugin and configuration, CampusPress Flex and the default WordPress themes provide accessible foundations out of the box, which may simplify your compliance efforts.

Accessibility Plugins

We have three accessibility plugins to help you make your website more accessible. You can activate them from the Plugins menu on your dashboard.

Accessibility (WP Accessibility)
- The WP Accessibility plugin helps with a variety of common accessibility problems in WordPress themes. It adds a number of helpful accessibility features that can be enabled or disabled based on your theme’s needs.
- View the Accessibility Plugin Guide from CampusPress
Accessible Content
- This plugin helps you check your pages and posts for potential accessible issues and highlights any content that needs attention.
- Alt Tags: Helps you find images that are missing Alt tags and warns you if Alt tags are too long or too short.
- Contrast Checker: Helps you determine if you do not have enough contrast between colors.
- Headings: Will check to make sure your headings are in the correct order and if you have multiple H1 tags.
- View the full list of features of the Accessible Content plugin.
Divi Accessibility
- If you are using the Divi theme, we recommend activating this plugin. It helps improve Divi’s accessibility.
- While Divi can be made accessible with the proper plugin and configuration, CampusPress Flex and the default WordPress themes provide accessible foundations out of the box, which may simplify your compliance efforts.

Resources to Help You

Training Opportunities

Student Affairs IT has organized training sessions to help UC Irvine staff better understand accessibility. The following are websites that guide you through the basics. You can also sign up for a Zoom Workshop, linked from each site. The workshops are engaging and informative. We highly recommend taking them both.