Making School Website Accessibility Easier

First, there was the scare cycle: “AI is going to take all the teacher jobs!” Then there was the hype cycle: “AI will make it so none of us will have to work EVER!” Now there is, hopefully, the reality cycle: AI is a great piece of tech that will make all of our jobs easier.

Edlio CEO Ali Arsan’s work is a case in point. He explains how their company developed an AI-powered solution that automatically fixes website accessibility issues instead of just identifying them. This approach saves significant time and resources for school districts that are required to maintain accessible websites for their communities. He highlights how AI can serve as an efficient tool that handles mechanical tasks while allowing humans to focus on more intellectual aspects of their work. Have a listen:

Key Takeaways:

1. AI is evolving from being viewed as either a threat to jobs or an overhyped technology to becoming a practical tool that enables education professionals to work more efficiently.
2. School website accessibility is a critical but often overlooked compliance issue that affects one in four people who have some form of disability.
3. Traditional methods of making websites accessible are time-consuming, requiring manual fixes for issues like contrast ratios, alt text, and heading structures across thousands of pages.
4. Edlio’s AI solution not only identifies accessibility problems (which existing tools already do) but automatically fixes up to 85% of the issues with a single click.
5. School districts often don’t address accessibility until they receive compliance letters from regulatory bodies like the Office of Civil Rights.
6. The WAVE tool is recommended as a free, open-source option for districts to initially assess their website accessibility issues.
7. AI development is advancing rapidly, shifting from large language models to “agentic” systems that can perform tasks based on conversational prompts.
8. Future AI applications in education will likely transform user interfaces to be more conversational, allowing administrators to interact with data systems through natural language rather than complex forms.