Your Congregation’s Website: Communicating Inclusion
When people first come to your website, they typically land on your ‘home’ page where there is an introduction to your church and congregation. Your church’s welcome message should explicitly include your congregation’s commitment to fully including and embracing disabled people in the life of the congregation.
One of the easiest and often the clearest means of communicating to disabled people that your congregation strives to be inclusive is to prominently alert people to your efforts to be accessible. It is important to state what your church offers and what is currently not offered. Being clear and upfront helps people know what to expect. The following document can be downloaded as a guide: Congregational Website Accessibility Information
Additional Information for your Website:
- Link to EqUUal Access’ webpage, http://www.equualaccess.org/, with explanation of what EqUUal Access is.
- Your website should include “page last updated” dates on each webpage so that a visitor knows that the information they are viewing is the most current and up to date (this is a good rule of thumb for all websites). The date doesn’t necessarily indicate that a change has been made, only that someone verified that the information is still accurate.
Examples of Welcoming and Accessible Websites
For examples of a congregations that have a website that is both welcoming and accessible to screen readers, please visit:
Website accessibility is a technical fix to a website that allows people who use assistive technology to access the information. If you have a website guru that can work on making your website functionally more accessible, here are links to some guidelines provided by the UUA: http://www.uua.org/communications/websites/accessibility and https://www.uua.org/leadership/library/accessible-website.
