Accessibility Statement for National Mentoring Resource Center

The National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC) is funded through a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. 

Committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities, NMRC worked with ArcStone and a digital accessibility expert to ensure that the website met web accessibility standards during the design and the development of the NMRC website. 

The expert is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) associated with the  International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) with over a decade of experience. The digital accessibility expert assisted the team in the design, development, and QA phases by certifying that all content meets the WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 guidelines.  Wireframes, interactive functionality, and color schemes are assessed to ensure the content is accessible to all end users. All code is manually inspected so that it can be accessed by all assistive technology devices.

  • As an organization funded by the federal government, NMRC must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which “requires federal agencies to develop, procure, maintain and use information and communications technology (ICT) that is accessible to people with disabilities — regardless of whether or not they work for the federal government.” Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not lay out specific guidelines or standards for websites and applications, a recent ruling declared WCAG 2.0 as the official standard of website accessibility for businesses and organizations.

    The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines recommendations and guidelines for designers and developers to make content accessible to a wide range of people with disabilities — including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. There are three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.

    To achieve compliance with Section 508, the NMRC website must meet The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1’s success criteria of Level AA.

  • We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the NMRC Website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers by contacting us through the channels below:

  • Accessibility of the NMRC website relies on the following coding languages and technical specifications to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

    • HTML
    • WAI-ARIA
    • CSS
    • JavaScript

    These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.

  • Accessibility for some content on the site, such as closed captions (CC) for videos and the sequence of headers, may not comply with WCAG’s 2.1 success criteria of Level AA as they are from a third-party and/or the content creators. ArcStone’s responsibilities were focused on the design and development of the website. The following lists aspects of the website where adjustments for accessibility were unable to be made and possible alternatives:

    • Resizing text is not a native function of the NMRC website. An alternative solution is to use the ability to zoom in through the device and/or browser that the website is being viewed on.
    • Reflections on Research Podcast — Soundcloud cover images and buttons do not have redirecting and/or descriptive texts. This adjustment can only be done by or through Soundcloud.
    • Map of OJJDP Grantees — The map is created through plugin MapSVG. Certain accessibility standards, such as labels and color contrast, can only be done by or through the developers of MapSVG.

  • As of 1/25/2021
    An evaluation audit was done from 1/16/2021 – 1/19/2021, and a report was provided by a Digital Accessibility expert on 1/25/2021 during the design and development stage of the NMRC Website. During this audit, it was reported that only 24% passed WCAG 2.1’s Level AA success criteria. Suggestions and edits were given, and ArcStone’s development team worked on assuring that more areas of the website were accessible before the launch of the NMRC website.