About Us

Project Description

Next Steps NH was a 2012-18 grant-funded project to increase the college and career readiness of New Hampshire students with disabilities and/or those at risk of dropping out of school. Project flyer (PDF, 2 pages)

An enduring outcome was the Transition Resource Portal, consisting of this website, the ELO website (beyondclassroom.org), a Facebook page and a Twitter account. The NH Department of Education has continued to fund the Transition Resource Portal since the grant funding concluded. Website flyer (PDF, 1 page, 2018)

The New Hampshire Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education, was awarded a State Personnel Development Grant (SPDG) for this project from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, for the years 2012-2017 (plus a one year extension).

Project Partners

The Next Steps NH project leadership team included people from:

Project High Schools

Cohort 4 (2016)

Exeter
Mascenic Regional
Raymond
Souhegan

Cohort 3 (2015)

Inter-Lakes
Newport
Nute
Timberlane Regional

Cohort 2 (2014)

Lincoln Woodstock (Linwood)
Winnacunnet
ConVal Regional
Somersworth

Cohort 1 (2014)

Kennett
Kingswood Regional
Mascoma Valley Regional
Merrimack Valley

Accessibility Practices

Our original grant stipulated that Next Steps NH web content would follow Priority Level 1 checkpoints of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and Section 508 standards for web-based Internet information/applications, which are based in part on the WAI Guidelines. The manual and automatic procedures used to evaluate the site will follow those recommended by the Web Accessibility Initiative. We now strive to achieve WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

A basic test for any webpage is to try it with a screen reader, or to imagine how information would be read by one. We also look at how a user would navigate without using a mouse or tracking pad.

Some short videos that explain different elements of  web accessibility:

Page title

The page title is descriptive of what is on that page. This helps search engines find the page as well.

Headings

Page titles are always heading level H1 and we do not use H1 for anything else. In most cases we start page headings with H2, and progress down as necessary, dropping only one level at a time. For example, we do not skip from an H2 to an H4 tag. If any level of header text is too large or too small, we manually adjust it on that particular page, while still keeping the same heading level for a screen reader. 

Colors

Web pages often use colors to provide visual clues. We make sure that when colors are used to convey either navigational or content information, we provide another means of conveying information that does not rely on color. 

Colors we use: headings green #008000, body text #3a3a3a

Images

We try to use images only for decorative purposes. If the image holds content, either we will include the content in the page text, or in an alt text tag. Decorative images do not have alt tags.

Checking accessibility

We use WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool)  as a quick check of a page. You simply enter the URL of the page you want to review.

More resources

Accessibility and Usability at Penn State has great resources for creating accessible materials, including websites.

WebAIM’s WCAG 2.0 Checklist is WebAIM’s interpretation of WCAG guidelines with recommended techniques for following those guidelines. This is not an official checklist.

Last site review date: 2020

Contact Us

This website is maintained by Betsy Street and Steve Bigaj in the School of Arts, Education and Humanities at Keene State College. Please contact us with any questions or suggestions. We are continually updating and improving it.


    NextSteps website flyer (PDF, 1 page, 2018) to introduce this website to others