Accessibility Certification Timeline

State agencies and departments must certify their websites as accessible every 2 years. To stay proactive, the website accessibility certification process follows a 2-year cycle, starting every June.  

• Year 1: Certification year (odd years) 
• Year 2: Maintenance year (even years) 

We use this timeline to have a proactive approach to make accessibility certification a smooth process.  

Year 1: Certification Year 

The first year – Year 1 – is considered a certification year. Certification year begins in June of even years and runs through May of odd years. Throughout the certification year, agencies and departments will need to address accessibility issues with their website and documents to meet accessibility certification criteria. Once the website and documents meet the website certification criteria, an updated website accessibility certification needs to be posted to the website by June 1 of the odd year.  

Example certification year 

The most recent certification year began June 1, 2024 (even year) and ends May 30, 2025 (even year). State agencies and departments will need to address accessibility issues with their website(s) and documents to re-certify their site(s) and update their website accessibility certification(s) by June 1, 2025.  

Certification year timeline 

State agencies and departments can use this certification year timeline as a guide for what they may plan on doing during the 12-month certification process. The timeline can be adjusted where needed, as long as state agencies and departments meet the requirement for posting an updated website certification by the June 1 deadline.  

Month(s)	Tasks	Team(s) involved
June	Planning  Notify content owners that this is a certification year  Validate and update content owner list  Identify training needs	Accessibility Team  Content owners/requestors  Content editors/publishers
July	Initial preparation  Pull analytics from the last 12 months  Create initial working list of prioritized content  Update the content Subject Mater Expert (SME) contact list	Accessibility Team
August	Kick-off meeting/communication to review:  Roles and responsibilities  Accessibility criteria for documents and web pages  Accessibility reports for each content area  Content owner’s task to fix accessibility issues  Scheduling training sessions	Accessibility Team  Content owners/requestors  Content editors/publishers  Management
August to December	Business areas to work on fixing any issues  Monthly reports and manual testing  Continuous fixes to issues  Contact Accessibility Team for support	Content editors/publishers  Content owners/requestors  Accessibility Team
January to May	Proactive testing and reporting  Monthly status report meetings with Agency CIO of all site content  Weekly reports  Weekly manual testing  Identify and correct issues from reports/testing (prioritized by most downloaded)	Accessibility Team  Agency CIO  Content editors/publishers  Content owners/requestors
May	Start of the certification process  Content and document freeze  Run through acceptance criteria  Final meeting with CIO for certification  Accessibility certification signatures  Post certification to websites (HTML)	Accessibility Team  Management  Web Team
June – July	Post certification wrap-up  Archive documents that are not accessible or no longer posted on the site  Conduct a lessons-learned session with everyone involved – this could help for next certification   Validate certifications are posted on your website(s)  Troubleshoot (if needed)	Accessibility Team  Management  Web Team

  

Year 2: Maintenance year 

The second year – Year 2 – is considered a maintenance year. The maintenance year begins June of odd years and runs through May of even years. Throughout the maintenance year, agencies and departments should aim to:  

• Keep their website(s) and documents in compliance with website accessibility certification criteria.  
• Create new pages and documents that meet website accessibility certification criteria.  

Maintaining accessibility compliance for your website(s) and documents during maintenance years reduce the amount of work required during the following certification year. 

Example maintenance year 

The most recent maintenance year began June 1, 2023 (odd year) and ended May 30, 2024 (even year).  

Maintenance year timeline 

State agencies and departments can use this maintenance task list as a guide for what they may plan on doing during the 12-month maintenance period.  

Team Responsible	Tasks
Content partner	Request accessibility training, if needed  Create and publish accessible documents  Run document accessibility tests  Perform manual tests  Review monthly Siteimprove reports  Fix accessibility issues  Contact the Accessibility Team for support
Accessibility team	Review Siteimprove documents quarterly  Contact content owner or Web Team with any issues. They will have a month to correct the issue or remove the content.