Accessibility & Disability Compliance

Green CulturED welcomes learners, industry professionals, Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) and business leaders with disabilities. We value disability as integral to our rich diversity and provide leadership to our efforts to ensure an accessible, inclusive welcoming learning and working environment for individuals with disabilities while complying with federal and state regulations. This serves as a central resource on disability-related information, procedures, and services for the cannabis community and provides expertise in the development, implementation, and acquisition of the best disability-related practices, procedures, and resources.

We are committed to making its websites accessible so in accordance with this commitment, and with the knowledge that accessible digital content generally enhances usability for everyone, this Policy is established to improve the user experience for those with disabilities. We recognize that websites and web-based applications are often integral to the academic and administrative work of our operations. This Policy addresses the needs of individuals with disabilities who seek to use our platform to participate in programs and activities and/or conduct business.

Accessibility Steering Committee

As further outlined in the Web Accessibility Implementation Procedures, the Accessibility Steering Committee (ASC) will establish and recommend to Senior Leadership a prioritization schedule for improving accessibility on certain existing websites. Priority shall be given to the most highly trafficked areas of our platform and to those that contain core institutional information.

The ASC, at the direction of and in coordination with Senior Leadership, periodically shall review this Policy, its associated procedures, and the governance model and, as appropriate, recommend changes. The review will help ensure that the Policy continues to align with our mission, including its commitment to accessibility.

Responsibility and Commitment

Senior Leadership is responsible for establishing mechanisms to ensure that our platform conforms to this Policy and have indicated our commitment to accessibility by including a link to this Policy.

The ASC may require that some or all non-conforming portions of a platform to be brought into conformance by designated staff or developers, and the expense of that work may be charged to the unit that is responsible for assuring the accessibility of that information. If the ASC is unable to determine who is responsible for the content that’s non-conforming, then our team will fix or remove whatever is non-conforming from the Green CulturED domain registry until it can be brought into conformance.

Upon a specific request by an individual who is unable to access specific content, either the requested content must be updated to conform to the Standards, or the requested content otherwise must be made available in an alternative format in a timely manner. The unit responsible for the creation and maintenance of the content on this website is responsible for making it accessible or providing the alternative.

The Path Forward

Our platform conforms to the Standards with respect to their platforms and infrastructure. Where conformance with the Standards is not technically feasible or may require extraordinary measures due to the nature of the information or the purpose of our platform (ex. it would create an undue hardship by fundamentally altering the site), a request for exception can be made. Insufficient funds of a particular unit will not be considered a valid reason for an exception except in extraordinary circumstances and as approved by the Accessibility Steering Committee (ASC).

While our team fixes an accessibility issue, we’ll provide an accommodation plan detailing how information will be made available in an alternative format to individuals with a disability.

We always ensure any new digital content created and produced at Green CulturED and conform to the Standards, to the extent technically feasible. Where conformance with the Standards is not technically feasible, so we always consider how to make the content available in an alternative format to individuals with a disability.

Learning Management System Accessibility

Our Learning Management System (LMS) and training materials, accessibility for all learners is crucial. Accessibility means training content can be used by learners with varying abilities and disabilities. The training materials created by our Instructional Design team are designed to provide an equal learning opportunity and information to all learners (ex. closed captioning for visual impairments, etc.).

This means that there should be no barriers for learners regardless of disabilities, the LMS utilizes assistive technologies along with different screen sizes and different input devices (ex. screen readers for hearing impairments, responsive resolution, touchscreens, etc.).

Accessibility Standards

For the purposes of this policy, Green CulturED will use The Worldwide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1, Level AA Conformance (WCAG 2.1 Level AA) as “the Standards”

ADA Section 508

What is Section 508 and why does it matter?

Green CulturED has implemented universal accessibility standards to meet the requirements of the American Disability Act – Section 508 (www.ADA.gov/508) in the LMS so that all our training materials are accessible to those with disabilities. We ensure that the training follows the minimum acceptable standards to eliminate barriers and enables the availability of our training to people with disabilities while using technology to help such individuals achieve their goals.

Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities. The law (29 U.S.C § 794 (d)) applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508, agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information comparable to the access available to others.

The rule updated and reorganized the Section 508 Standards and Section 255 Guidelines in response to market trends and innovations in technology. The refresh also harmonized these requirements with other guidelines and standards both in the U.S. and abroad, including standards issued by the European Commission, and with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), a globally recognized voluntary consensus standard for web content and ICT.

IMS LTI™ Certified

Our LMS is certified Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) Advantage Complete. The LTI™ certification is a global technical standard for integrating learning applications. LTI Advantage is a package of services that improve upon 1.1 and 2.0 and is the current standard. Users can integrate and present externally hosted applications and content within a single platform without having to develop and maintain custom integrations.

WCAG 2.1 Level AA

Our LMS has received WCAG 2.1 Level AA accreditation based on successfully resolving the issues identified in an external audit of key pages which were chosen as representative of its overall functionality and accessibility. Continuing work is being done to further improve the accessibility of other areas in our LMS in order to maintain conformance with the WCAG 2.1 Level AA guidelines.

In addition, the LMS interface is presented as an HTML application that complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (www.W3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag) that is developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world. The goal is to provide a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.

Green CulturED’s training is always in compliance with SCORM (standards for web-based learning) and developed in accordance with the American Disability Act (ADA) Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (accessibility considerations for impaired persons). These two (2) regulations require that all eLearning content be available in a standardized form for learners to ensure all content is developed using publishing tools to produce training must demonstrate compliance with these standards.

When it comes to our Learning Management System (LMS) and compliance training materials, accessibility for all learners is crucial. Accessibility means training content can be used by learners with varying abilities and disabilities. The training materials created by our Instructional Design team are designed to provide an equal learning opportunity and information to all learners (ex. closed captioning for visual impairments, etc.).

This means that there should be no barriers for learners regardless of disabilities, the LMS utilizes assistive technologies along with different screen sizes and different input devices (ex. screen readers for hearing impairments, responsive resolution, touchscreens, etc.). We ensure that the training follows the minimum acceptable standards to eliminate barriers and enables the availability of our training to people with disabilities while using technology to help such individuals achieve their goals.

LMS Documentation

The LMS have plenty of documentation, course content, and resources available for anyone to use under the terms of various licenses. The LMS is a global learning management platform that supports open standards and is interoperable by design to enable the integration of external applications and information onto a single platform. Our commitment to open standards means institutions and organizations can leverage our LMS to customize and extend features for any teaching and learning requirements and benefit from increased cost efficiencies, flexibility, and easier manageability along with performance and scalability advantages of using our LMS.

Web Standards

As part of our ongoing commitment to provide an accessible platform and to continuously improve our compliance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA, our LMS has been working with an external auditor to review the platform.

Key pages within our LMS, which are representative of its overall accessibility and functionality, were audited with automated tools and user journey testing. The WCAG 2.1 Level A and Level AA issues raised from this audit have all been addressed. A large number of these accessibility improvements have also been back-ported to our LMS, where possible. Our LMS first received WCAG 2.1 Level AA accreditation based on successfully resolving the issues identified in the audit. Since the first accreditation, our LMS undergoes an annual audit and re-accreditation process.

Our LMS can be used by users to author content for other users. In some cases, accessibility features have been added to the authoring tools so that the content that is produced is as accessible as possible. An example is the “At to text editor” which includes an “Accessibility checker” and an “Accessibility helper” which provide additional information for content authors on the accessibility of their content (like checks for sufficient contrast). The equations produced by the MathJax content filter have full accessibility enabled so they can be passed directly to the screen reader as maths content.

All components in our LMS need to be available to use by all users. Accessibility needs to be part of the design of every new feature in our LMS. For simple features with no requirement for an advanced user interface, simple adherence to standard HTML5 does provide an accessible feature. In this case, it is better to use no ARIA than it would be to use it incorrectly (W3C no Aria).