Statistics show that in the United States alone, one in four adults has a disability. Prioritizing specialized ministries, which include accessibility mindfulness, allows churches to recognize diversity and care for the unique needs of their members and communities. By addressing accessibility, an essential part of ministry, churches can help all United Methodists feel valued and able to engage in worship and overall church life.
Architectural and programmatic barriers regarding this vital part of our work are often foremost in thought. As such, many churches work to identify and provide support via entrance ramps, bathroom modifications, sign language during services and offering braille bibles. Contrarily, often overlooked, the digital footprints of our ministries are avenues to consider when evaluating access to our resources.
"Unless you need them, accessibility benefits aren't overtly obvious on sites. But whether you need them now or in the future, a thoughtful, differently-abled approach to presenting content should be a goal as we seek to serve others," offers Stephen Fox, team lead of Customer Experience at United Methodist Communications (UMCom).
Thanks to the power of the UM connection and others seeking a just and inclusive webspace, all local churches can benefit from previously completed digital accessibility work.
Check out this overview to help church content creators and web teams get started on understanding. learning about and forging into online accessibility.
What is W3C?
If you're not a web developer, you may be unfamiliar with this entity and its documents. However, this behind-the-scenes work is instrumental in helping all website visitors access and engage with the materials we provide on our web pages.
The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to "lead the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible, and interoperable for everyone around the globe." The international multi-stakeholder community, most known for its HTML standards, consists of an ongoing collaboration of member organizations, W3C employees and the public to provide free services for society.
Their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) offer technical standards to help make information on web pages more accessible to people with disabilities. These standards pertain to text, images, sounds and the coding that represents the presentation of this content online.
Are there accessible resources for UM local churches?United Methodist Communications (UMCom)—the official communications agency for The United Methodist Church—has invested, and continues to invest, significant time to ensure that the denominational websites align with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
This groundwork means that your local church can save time by using pre-existing content that you can trust is in keeping with best accessibility practices.
When planning your website and social media content, consider sharing content for members from UMC.org, news of the church from UMNews.org and resources from across the UMC connection for your church's staff and lay leaders via ResourceUMC.org. For example, instead of writing new information about The UMC's beliefs on your website, hyperlink to the "What We Believe" page on the official denominational website or create individual links to specific topics. Using this information, developed with concern for accessibility by the United Methodist Communications' content team, will help you to be inclusive while sharing accurate content with minimal effort that keeps your members and visitors informed and saves your staff valuable ministry time.
"After an initial test with UM News, UMCom has rolled out a 'listen to the article' feature that uses the power of AI-generated speech to deliver an audio presentation option for UMC content that pairs nicely with the array of podcasts and webinars offerings," said United Methodist Communications' lead of technology and Development, Matt Crum. "It's exciting to present our visitors with options for how to engage with our websites. We hope the listening feature will offer additional accessibility to our content, much like how the Google Translate selections have provided automated functionality to alleviate language barriers."
The listen feature is now included on new content, and select evergreen articles will see the audio option applied in the future. Other accessibility efforts implemented include an adjustment of fonts and font sizes and continuing to offer closed captioning and transcripts. Photographs on the websites have been optimized for specialized browser screen readers, allowing for captions of photographs to be read when moving over a photo.
“Work is also underway on additional accessibility features such as Intuitive navigation using a keyboard’s tab button,” said Fox.
“Though not everything is completely accessible, UMCom has worked diligently over the years to improve the accessibility of the content on the denominational websites,” noted Danny Mai, the agency's head of operations and infrastructure. “It’s important to note that there are always new things to learn about digital accessibility. Keeping up with technological changes, we may introduce new features or change platforms that unexpectedly break the accessibility functionality previously in place. It’s a bit of a dance: finding the right tools, adapting and finding workarounds.”
“Despite the challenges, UMCom is committed to aligning with the latest internationally recognized accessibility standards to ensure our digital content is inclusive and usable for all United Methodists,” adds Crum.
Are you ready to upgrade your ministry communications?
How can churches implement accessibility standards?
Review inter-church learning opportunities
Outside of providing accessible content, UMCom also offers helpful resources to aid church leaders in actively providing a more equitable website experience and other tools to inclusively serve the entire church body.
Below are a few of the resources available:
Go the extra step to ensure your digital content is accessible to all
Inclusive by design: Crafting accessible church websites
Make your church disability-friendly and accessible; earn a badge
The Disability Ministries Committee of The United Methodist Church also provides links to resources and a grant application to help churches avoid non-discriminatory practices.
Explore accessibility ally sites
Whether you learn best by checking out articles, reading eBooks or listening to podcasts, many allies want you to succeed in your accessibility work. Doing a Google search will lead you to myriad options.
One such option is The A11Y Project, which offers a wealth of resources to help pave the way for tech accessibility. The website shares open source software and links to various tools, many of which are complimentary.
Offer continuing education to your internal team
The World Wide Web Consortium offers "Introduction to Web Accessibility" - a free, self-paced online course designed for learners at all levels, from students to professionals to end users. (The current course version is available through at least June 2025.)
They also provide an online listing of other learning resource providers. The page allows you to filter out and sort options that best meet your specific needs in areas such as learning level, format, language and cost.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which follows the WCAG standards, also provides guidance and example cases to help reduce barriers to content.
Choose the right web vendor
If the idea of navigating website accessibility seems overwhelming, a vast number of vendors would be happy to assist your church. If you enlist outside help for web design, ask your developer if they use W3C standards. Selecting a vendor with this knowledge and including this compliance in your scope of work contract sets you up for successful implementation on your website. Pro tip: Don't be afraid to tap into the talent of college interns to offer them an opportunity to get hands-on practice while helping you navigate budgetary constraints.
Vet resources
“Depending on a church's content management system (CMS), there may be marketplace add-ons or software libraries that they can license to install but these can be very cost prohibitive for local churches. Unfortunately, web accessibility is expensive,” added Mai. “If you do an online search, you can find offers of free tools but you'll want to fully vet them and seek out expert reviews and user reviews from sites such as Trust Pilot. No matter your vetting, it’s also important to remember that sometimes the plugins can impact site performance, so there are some cons to embedding certain tools.
In summary . . .
Whether you start with ready-to-use articles, update your content as you apply learnings or do a site overhaul to make your website inclusive, your efforts go towards having a profound impact on your members and visitors. Being mindful of accessibility helps to offer a just and impactful way for all of your resources to be accessible to everyone that you serve.
Brenda Smotherman is the lead of public relations at United Methodist Communications and assists in sharing stories of United Methodists putting faith into action and provides publicity support for matters surrounding The United Methodist Church denomination. She has a combined history of 30+ years of experience in marketing and publicity. Smotherman lives in Tennessee with her husband and two rescue dogs.