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Accessibility Statement

We want everyone who visits the Downingtown Area School District website to feel welcome and find the experience rewarding.

What are we doing?

To help us make the Downingtown Area School District website a positive place for everyone, we've been using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities, and user friendly for everyone.

The guidelines have three levels of accessibility (A, AA and AAA). We’ve chosen Level AA as the target for the Downingtown Area School District website.

How are we doing?

We've worked hard on the Downingtown Area School District website and believe we've achieved our goal of Level AA accessibility. We monitor the website regularly to maintain this, but if you do find any problems, please get in touch.

Let us know what you think

If you enjoyed using the Downingtown Area School District website, or if you had trouble with any part of it, please get in touch. We'd like to hear from you.

Text-To-Speech or Read Aloud Tools

There are many Text-to-Speech or Read Aloud tools available. Some are integrated readers where the software you are using has the tool incorporated in it, some are "add-ons" from the browser, some are able to be downloaded from the internet for free or for a cost.

Text-To-Speech or Read Aloud Tools:

  • Lenovo Laptops/Microsoft Narrator: Press Windows key+Ctrl+Enter
  • Mac: Apple Menu>System Settings>Accessibility>VoiceOver
  • Apple iPhone/iPad: Settings>Accessibility>VoiceOver
  • Samsung: Settings>Accessibility>Vision Enhancement
  • MS Word: Tool banner under "Review">Read Aloud (Alt+Ctrl+Space)
  • Adobe: Tool banner under "View"> Read Out Loud (Shift+Ctrl+Y)
  • Chrome: Embedded read aloud tool: right-click on a page>select "Open in reading mode">Click "Play" button
  • Chrome: In addition, Chrome has various extensions you can download: Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader, Read Aloud: Text to Speech, Speechify, etc.
  • NVDA Screen Reader (NonVisual Desktop Access): Free to download. Finalsite uses this tool as its official ADA screen reader to verify compliance.

Screen readers convert digital text and other on-screen information to an auditory format - a synthesized voice. Most screen readers allow you to choose the sound of the voice, the pace of the voice, if you want punctuation read, links identified, etc. It is important to remember that no screen reader is perfect. No screen reader will read all content without problems. For example, a screen reader cannot read a picture so alt text is essential to communicate the content of the image. 

Learning how a screen reader works and the keyboard commands can be challenging. There are no universal commands so each screen reader will be unique and will take time to learn. Regardless, using a screen reader to hear your page is an important part of checking for accessibility. Find a screen reader you are comfortable with, learn it and integrate it into your accessibility checklist.