Accessibility at RavenGrader

RavenGrader builds AI-assisted grading tools for higher-education STEM courses. Instructors, teaching assistants, students, and accessibility reviewers all need to be able to use the platform, independently and equitably. This page describes our current standards target, what works today, what we're actively improving, and how to reach us if you hit a barrier.

Conformance target

We are working toward conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA, the technical standard adopted by the U.S. Department of Justice's April 2024 Title II final rule. We separately track the new WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA success criteria for institutions standardizing on the 2022 update, and we report against the Revised Section 508 web chapter for U.S. federal alignment.

Where we stand today

The current assessment is a first-party (self-assessment) reportproduced via manual inspection of the production frontend (component structure, semantic HTML and ARIA usage, keyboard handling, color contrast against design tokens, KaTeX/ MathLive math output, and the PDF viewer). Hands-on assistive- technology testing (screen reader, keyboard-only, and 200–400% zoom) and an independent third-party audit are the gating step before any verdict moves to a full "Supports."

What works today

• Live-region status messaging app-wide so screen-reader users hear grading progress, batch completion, and review changes as they happen.
• Rendered math is output as MathML alongside the visual rendering, so equations are exposed to assistive technology rather than read as opaque images.
• Global visible keyboard-focus indicator across every interactive control.
• Logical reading order, descriptive page titles on every route, labeled authentication and account forms, and ARIA-based dialogs, tabs, and toggle controls.
• prefers-reduced-motion honored for fade-in and progress animations.
• Color is never the only carrier of meaning for graded scores: the numeric value is always shown alongside the color cue.
• Automated accessibility linting (eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y) runs in CI on every pull request, so new a11y regressions get caught before they land.

Known gaps we're working on

• Skip-to-main link + consistent <nav> landmarks for faster keyboard / screen-reader navigation.
• Modal focus management: moving focus into a dialog on open and restoring it to the trigger on close. Today our dialogs close on Escape but don't programmatically move focus.
• PDF viewer landmarks and page-level alternatives so student submissions are easier to navigate without sighted reading.
• User setting to remap or disable single-character keyboard shortcuts in the grading view.
• Session-expiry pre-warningwith an "extend" option so review edits aren't lost to a silent timeout.
• Hands-on assistive-technology testing (NVDA, VoiceOver, JAWS, keyboard-only, 200–400% zoom) and an independent third-party audit, the gating step before our self-assessed verdicts can be promoted.

The full prioritized remediation roadmap is published as Appendix A of our VPAT and reviewed every six months (or on any material UI change).

Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT)

A complete Accessibility Conformance Report based on the VPAT® 2.5 (WCAG Edition)(covering every WCAG 2.1 Level A & AA success criterion, the new WCAG 2.2 criteria, and the Revised Section 508 mapping) is available on request. The report includes per-criterion verdicts (Supports / Partially Supports / Does Not Support / Not Applicable / Not Evaluated), remarks, and the remediation roadmap.

Email christopherlauw@ravengrader.com and we will reply with the latest revision (currently 1.1, dated 2026-06-26) as a PDF.

Reporting an accessibility barrier

If you hit a barrier using RavenGrader, anything at all, please tell us. We treat accessibility defects as bugs, not feature requests, and we want to hear about them whether you encountered them as a student, instructor, accessibility office, or procurement reviewer.

When you write to us, including any of the following helps us reproduce and fix the issue faster (none of it is required):

• What you were trying to do and where (page URL or screen).
• The assistive technology you were using (screen reader, keyboard-only, magnification, etc.) and its version.
• Your browser and operating system.
• What happened versus what you expected.

Send reports to christopherlauw@ravengrader.com. We aim to acknowledge within two business days and to provide a status update, including an interim workaround where possible, within ten business days. For urgent course-deadline barriers, please mark the subject line accordingly and we will prioritize.

Formal complaints

If you are unsatisfied with our response, you can escalate tochristopherlauw@ravengrader.comwith "Accessibility complaint" in the subject line. We will acknowledge within two business days, investigate, and provide a written response with the steps we're taking and a target timeline.

Scope & limits

This statement covers the authenticated grading application (instructor and student surfaces) and our public marketing and account pages. The Canvas-embedded (LTI) views are built from the same component library and inherit its accessibility properties, but have not yet been separately tested inside the Canvas iframe; conformance verdicts for those views will be reported once they are evaluated in their own pass.

Third-party content embedded in the product, including the Stripe checkout flow used for billing, is subject to those vendors' own accessibility statements.

Contact

Accessibility owner: christopherlauw@ravengrader.com. General contact: williamtjandra@ravengrader.com.