Accessibility Statement
Last updated: August 27, 2026
Transition Curriculum, Inc. ("Transition Curriculum," "we," "us") builds NextUp — this website and the NextUp application — to be usable by the widest possible range of people, including people who use assistive technology such as screen readers, screen magnification, voice control, and keyboard-only navigation. This statement describes the standard we design and test against, the federal and state laws that inform that work, what we've already put in place, where we know we still fall short, and how to tell us about a barrier you run into.
For the plan we follow to find and fix accessibility gaps over time, see our Good-Faith Accessibility Remediation Plan.
Conformance target
We design and develop NextUp to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA (opens in a new tab). We use WCAG 2.1 AA because it is the technical standard the U.S. Department of Justice and a growing number of states have adopted for the public entities we serve (see below), and because it is the most widely recognized benchmark for digital accessibility. Conformance is an ongoing process, not a one-time state — our Good-Faith Remediation Plan describes how we track and close gaps over time.
Legal frameworks we align with
Federal law
- Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Department of Justice's 2024 final rule. DOJ published a final rule under Title II on April 24, 2024 (effective June 24, 2024) requiring state and local government entities to make their web content and mobile apps conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Title II applies directly to public entities — such as the public school districts, charter schools, and other government agencies that license NextUp — rather than to Transition Curriculum as a private company. Because most of our customers are subject to Title II, we build NextUp to the same WCAG 2.1 AA standard so our district partners can meet their own obligations. DOJ's April 20, 2026 interim final rule extended the original compliance dates; the current dates are April 26, 2027 for entities serving populations of 50,000 or more, and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special districts. We are not waiting for those dates — WCAG 2.1 AA is our present-day target.
- Related federal regulations. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (which covers recipients of federal funding, including most K-12 districts) and Section 508 (federal procurement) point to the same WCAG 2.1 AA benchmark that guides our work.
State laws
NextUp serves school districts and state agencies nationwide, and a growing number of states have enacted their own digital accessibility laws for state and local government entities and the contractors who serve them. These laws are typically built around the same WCAG 2.1 AA standard referenced above, and some also require contractors like Transition Curriculum to indemnify the contracting entity against accessibility noncompliance or to cooperate with third-party compliance verification. Rather than tailor our approach state by state, we hold NextUp to WCAG 2.1 AA everywhere we operate, and we work directly with any customer whose state law imposes additional obligations — such as contractor indemnification or third-party verification — to meet those requirements.
How we build for accessibility
- Document language and structure: every page declares its language (
<html lang="en">) and uses semantic headings and landmarks. - Keyboard and focus: interactive controls use visible focus styling, and menus and navigation toggles expose their state to assistive technology (e.g.
aria-expanded,aria-controls). - Accessible names for icons: icon-only controls carry an explicit accessible name (
role="img" aria-label="…"), and purely decorative icons are hidden from assistive technology (aria-hidden="true") so screen readers aren't cluttered with noise. - Dialogs and modals: pop-up panels such as our lesson-materials and assessment dialogs follow the ARIA dialog pattern (
role="dialog",aria-modal="true", a labeled heading, and a labeled close control). - Status messages: form validation and session messages are announced to assistive technology through live regions (
role="alert" aria-live="assertive") rather than relying on color or position alone. - Assistive toolbar: we also provide a supplemental accessibility toolbar site-wide (bottom-right icon) that offers reading and display adjustments. We treat it as an addition to accessible code, not a replacement for it.
- Independent audits: we completed a full accessibility audit with Accessible.org within the past year, and accessiBe — our accessibility widget provider — runs a monthly automated compliance scan of the site. Findings from both feed our Good-Faith Remediation Plan.
Known limitations
We aim for full transparency about where NextUp doesn't yet meet our own standard:
- Third-party and user-uploaded content. Documents, videos, and links that districts or Transition Curriculum staff upload or embed — PDFs, Google Forms/Drive folders, recorded video, and rich-text lesson content authored through our editor — aren't always fully under our code-level control and may not meet WCAG 2.1 AA. We're auditing this content as part of our remediation plan.
- Legacy front-end components. Parts of the application were built on older front-end tooling that predates some of the patterns described above. Those patterns are applied consistently in newer parts of the app and are being backfilled elsewhere.
Report a barrier
If you encounter an accessibility barrier while using NextUp, please tell us:
- Email NextUp@TransitionCurriculum.com with the subject line "Accessibility."
- Include the page or URL, what you were trying to do, and the browser or assistive technology you were using, if known.
We acknowledge accessibility reports within 5 business days and provide a target resolution timeframe based on the severity of the issue, using the triage process described in our Good-Faith Remediation Plan. District customers may also request this statement in an alternate format, or request our current accessibility conformance report, by contacting their Transition Curriculum account representative.
Document history
- August 27, 2026 — Initial publication.