SCU Web Team

Meeting Follow-Up: T4 Compliance Assistant Tool, Grackle, and Accessibility Support

Colleagues,

Thank you for taking proactive steps to ensure your digital content meets the federal WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility requirements by May 1. We are here to support you in navigating that path to full web accessibility compliance.

Please note that websites with unresolved, flagged accessibility issues will be disabled on May 1 and will remain unavailable until the issues are addressed and the site is republished.

The good news is that we now have several new accessibility tools available that make this work much more manageable by breaking archiving and remediation tasks into smaller, practical steps. These include a Compliance Assistant integrated directly into TerminalFour (T4), Grackle within Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, Microsoft’s built-in Accessibility Checker in Word, and Allyant’s CommonLook PDF, which will allow us to remediate PDFs when the original source file no longer exists or requires complex remediation. While we did not have time to introduce every tool during the session, they significantly expand our ability to support you across websites, documents, and PDFs.

If you need hands-on guidance, please register for a WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Compliance Lab at a date and time that works for you. Sessions are scheduled through May 2026, and we encourage you to attend early so you can pace the work comfortably and allow time to escalate any issues to our team for resolution.

For those unable to attend, we have included the shared resources and a meeting summary below, along with the meeting Google Slides and the Zoom recording.

Helpful Resources:

T4 Compliance Assistant Tool
WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Compliance Lab dates & times (Individual bookings will be available soon)
Accessible Word Documents documentation
Accessible Google Docs with Grackle documentation
Web Accessibility Compliance webpage
Design Accessibility tool in Canva
Convert Files into Alternative Formats
Find more campus resources to make content accessible on the Accessibility website

Summary

Federal Mandate
1. All digital content must conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards by May 1, 2026
2. Archive exemption criteria:
  - Created before May 2026
  - Maintained only for reference
  - Stored in a designated archive
  - Remains unchanged since being archived
The Compliance Assistant Tool
1. Segment begins at timestamp 10:00 in the Zoom recording
2. Can be accessed from the T4 dashboard
3. Site portion - tool involves a three-step process to help with the remediation process
  - Step 1* - HTML Email Management
    - “Recipe vs. Cookie” - T4 stores the “recipe” and the HTML page is the “baked cookie”
    - Archiving - Snapshot of the page (“cookie”) is stored, the T4 section (“recipe”) is deleted, and a redirect is added. This process will exempt sent emails from compliance requirements while ensuring that old “read it online” links continue to work for users.
  - Step 2* - Website Clean-up
    - Identifies “stale” content or pages that have not been updated in three years or have low traffic based on Google Analytics data
    - Allows for bulk deletion and automatic move to T4 purge
  - Step 3 - Accessibility Inspection
    - Published web pages are scanned every 5-7 days for WCAG issues.
    - Accessibility issues are divided into “Compliance Issues” (required) and “Best Practice Issues” (recommended but not mandatory)
    - Errors can be viewed directly on the page by using the Inspect button. There is also a “Learn how to fix” link under the “Actions” button for each error, as well as a direct “Edit Content in T4” link to the corresponding T4 content.
    - Not all accessibility issues can be easily fixed. Click “Escalate issue” under the “Actions” button to generate a Zendesk support ticket.
  - * - A department staff member must do Step 1 and Step 2. If you would like assistance with Step 3 after Step 1 and 2 are complete, you can make a request using Zendesk.
4. PDF Accessibility portion - allows removal of unused PDFs in the T4 media library and flags PDFs with the most accessibility issues
  - For published high-risk PDFs that require complex remediation, the university has partnered with Allyant (CommonLook PDF remediation tool) to help with the fix
  - No one should see "T4 Training" anymore in their list of sites, or PDFs in the "Public" path in the PDF interface.
T4 Holding / T4 Purge
1. Segment begins at timestamp 59:18 in the Zoom recording
2. The T4 Holding section is your place to store drafts, templates, or sections to be published/reused later.
  - Any content in the T4 Holding section will neither be published nor deleted.
  - The T4 Holding folder is added to all top branches; if you don’t see the folder you can create the folder yourself by adding it as a new section or send us a ticket and we’d be happy to make it for you.
3. The T4 Purge section permanently deletes content and sections regardless of status (i.e. pending or inactive).
  - A T4 purge folder exists within your parent section or subsection as well as within the Media Library
  - NOTE: Media files should no longer be stored in the Public folder of the Media Library, which is intended for sharing files to be used by everyone (i.e. SCU logos)
Grackle Docs remediation tool
1. Segment begins at timestamp 01:07:58 in the Zoom recording
2. Remediating documents at the source (Word or Google Docs) is more efficient and easier than attempting to fix a final PDF in Adobe Acrobat
3. Use Grackle, a licensed add-on for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides (Open a Google Doc > Extensions > Grackle Docs > Launch)
4. Use Grackle’s “Export to PDF” function to preserve accessibility tags better than the standard Google “Download as PDF” feature
Accessible Word documents
1. Segment begins at timestamp 01:20:10 in the Zoom recording
2. Use the native “Check Accessibility” tool under the Review tab in Word
3. Avoid placing images in the header/footer since the conversion to PDF removes the alt text
4. Use descriptive, meaningful link text instead of full URLs or “click here”
5. Need practice? Download the Word Accessibility Tool Practice Document(.docx) from Google Drive and complete the exercises

Let’s continue working together to ensure our digital content, platforms, and services are accessible to all members of our community.