Digital Accessibility: Wesleyan Web Policy
The Wesleyan Web Policy defines the roles and obligations of the University, departments, and individuals in presenting material on all Wesleyan web presences, whether hosted at Wesleyan or with a 3rd party service. When there are conflicts the Technology Acceptable Use Policy takes precedence over this policy.
All department, program and administrative unit web pages are hosted on the approved centrally managed hosting platform as described in the web standards document. All academic Wesleyan Websites must maintain an up-to-date record of faculty, courses offered, and official program description.
Faculty and staff are encouraged to use the approved centrally managed blog hosting platform as described in the web standards document for web sites to support the scholarly, pedagogic, artistic, and professional activities of individual faculty and staff, as well as for courses, research, department websites, and collaborative projects for faculty and staff.
Individual student web pages, as well as individual faculty and staff pages that cannot be accommodated on the approved centrally managed blog hosting platform, must be hosted on the approved 3rd party managed blog hosting platform as described in the web standards document .
If none of the above solutions will meet a faculty member’s needs and that faculty member opts to run their own web server, all responsibility for operating the web server falls on the faculty member. This includes responsibilities to provide and maintain hardware, to provide and maintain software, to backup data, and to provide technical support, as well as being responsible for any security incidents as a result of an improperly maintained server.
Every Wesleyan hosted website must have a designated administrator. The website administrator does not need to be the website owner or original requestor. The website administrator is responsible for ensuring the reliability, accuracy, compliance, and general organization of their web presence(s). If the website is anything other than a student-administered website on the approved 3rd party managed blog hosting platform, the website and administrator must be communicated to University Communications. Whenever a website administrator changes, that information will be communicated to University Communications. University Communications will maintain a list of all website administrators and what websites they administer.
All website content must follow all applicable university policies, as well as all applicable laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) as amended Sections 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. All website content also must make a reasonable effort to ensure that electronic and information technology (EIT) be accessible, as outlined in the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards as outlined in the Digital Accessibility Standards document.
Any requests for support, including requests for new Wesleyan websites, should follow the processes outlined in the Wesleyan Web Standards document.
Wesleyan does not actively monitor the contents of Wesleyan hosted websites. However, when materials are found that violate Wesleyan policies or applicable laws, the University reserves the right to remove materials, to disable links, and to impose charges for expenses incurred in such disabling and/or removal.
Web sites that are administered by former students as well as web sites that appear to be inactive and which are administered by faculty or staff will be deactivated in accordance with the processes described in the Wesleyan Web Standards document. Wesleyan has no responsibility for damages caused by removal of data in accordance with these processes.
Any changes to this document will go through the standard policy approval process.