Accessibility at Vivi

Vivi is used by students and teachers with a wide range of abilities. In a classroom, the gap between software that works for most students and software that works for every student is a student who cannot take part in the lesson. We treat accessibility as a permanent part of how we build rather than a project with a completion date.

The standard we build to

We build and test Vivi against WCAG 2.1 Level AA. This is the standard specified in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Title II rule under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which applies to public school districts and to the digital content and applications they make available to students, including software provided under contract with vendors like us.

The DOJ’s compliance dates are 26 April 2027 for public entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, and 26 April 2028 for entities under 50,000 and for special district governments. The deadline is set by the population of the jurisdiction, not by student enrollment. Our program is scheduled to deliver conformance documentation for our products ahead of the earlier of those dates.

We also track state requirements that run ahead of the federal timeline, including Colorado’s HB21-1110, Virginia’s Information Technology Access Act procurement terms, and requirements in Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey. If your state has specific contract language for digital instructional tools, we will work with you on it directly.

What the standard covers in Vivi

Two Vivi surfaces fall within this scope, and we treat both the same way.

• Vivi Central, our web administration portal, is a web application and sits directly within the rule’s technical standard for web content.
• The Vivi classroom application, used on desktop, mobile and web, is covered as a mobile app and as software a district makes available to students under contract.

Both are built to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, both are independently audited, and we will publish a conformance report for each.

Independent verification

We have engaged Accessibility.Works, a digital accessibility compliance consulting firm, to conduct independent third-party audits of our products against WCAG 2.1 levels A and AA. The team augments the limitations of automated scans by conducting manual testing with the screen readers students and staff actually use: JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack.

The audit program covers Vivi Central, our web administration portal, and the Vivi classroom application on desktop, mobile and web.

Documentation for procurement and audit

Procurement teams need something they can put in a file. We are producing an Accessibility Conformance Report using the VPAT template for each surface, Vivi Central and the Vivi classroom application, scheduled for publication in early 2027, ahead of the April 2027 compliance date. Each report covers conformance against every applicable success criterion, with supporting detail and dated remediation commitments where relevant.

If you need something in writing before that report is published, for a board paper, an audit response, a resolution agreement or a procurement file, contact us and we will provide a current written statement of conformance status for your file. We would rather give you accurate documentation than have you estimate on our behalf.

How we report conformance

Accessibility conformance is measured against specific success criteria, on specific platforms, at a specific date. That is why we publish a conformance report rather than a compliance claim. It is the document a procurement team can act on, and it is the reason we pay for independent testing instead of assessing ourselves.

We also do not use accessibility overlays or widgets in place of conformance work. The evidence on overlays is poor, and in January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered an overlay vendor to pay $1 million over claims that its product could make websites WCAG-compliant. Our approach is to make the product the right way.

What this looks like in a classroom

Accessibility work in a presentation tool is not abstract:

• A student with low vision pulling the shared screen onto their own device, at a size they can read
• A multilingual learner following captioned and translated content
• A student using keyboard or switch access being able to move through the interface at all
• Clearer contrast and a more readable typeface for the half of the class sitting at the back

Universal Design for Learning has made this argument for years, and our own testing keeps confirming it. Designing for the students at the edges makes the room work better for everyone in it.

Contact

Accessibility questions, documentation requests and issue reports: info@vivi.io.