Web Accessibility Statement

Page Content

The University of Southern Mississippi is committed to being an inclusive community where everyone is encouraged to participate in our programs and activities, especially individuals with disabilities.  We want everyone who visits our website to feel welcome and find the experience rewarding, regardless of technology or ability. In accordance with both the spirit and letter of the law, we are committed to ensuring that the information and technology provided through our website are, indeed, inclusive as well as accessible.

What are we doing?

The University of Southern Mississippi has adopted the best practices and standards as defined by Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act and level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible for people with disabilities. 

In this regard, for all new web development, we use site development tools in addition to NVDA and JAWS screen-reading software, to help us identify accessibility issues. New web content is optimized for the latest stable releases of the most commonly used browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox) and operating systems (Windows 10, OS X v. 10.10, Android version 7.0, and iOS 10.3.3).

We are preparing guidelines and training materials for our web development team and for our content creators to assist them in ensuring all new web pages meet accessibility standards.

We ask that you please reach out to us if you have trouble accessing any part of our website. We would like to hear from you in any of the following ways:

• Online form
• Alternate Format Request
•  Office of Compliance and Ethics 601.266.4466
• If you have other accessibility concerns, or need to request accommodations, please contact Student Accessibility Services by telephone at 601.266.5024, or by email at sasFREEMississippi. For additional information, visit the Student Accessibility Services’ website.
• Individuals with hearing impairments can use the Mississippi Relay Service at 1.800.582.2233 (TTY).

How are we doing?

We are striving to achieve and maintain our goal of Level AA accessibility. We are committed to monitoring the website regularly and performing regular updates when issues are discovered and/or brought to our attention, so that we may be inclusive of everyone and provide quality access to quality content. We are aware that there may be some older content that is less than 100 percent compliant, but we are working to get all content to a uniform level of accessibility. If you have reached a page that is not accessible, please contact us as described above at your earliest convenience.

Certain legacy web pages, or web pages that are housed in older software systems, may have to be converted into alternative formats. Our team will determine which legacy pages may fall into this category as we receive inquiries about older web pages.

Examples of Accessibility Software

NVDA is a free screen reader for Windows. A downloadable version is available online.

JAWS is a commercially sold screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available online.