Overview
The George Washington University (GW) embedded accessibility into daily digital work. With 25,374 students, 205 years of mission, and a massive multi-channel web footprint, GW used Siteimprove.ai enterprise monitoring, built accessibility into Drupal workflows, and paired training with bi-weekly testing to achieve 90%+ scores across 766 enterprise sites.
The Problem
Before GW’s accessibility overhaul, the university’s sprawling digital footprint made it difficult to maintain a consistent baseline of quality. With 766 enterprise sites and more than 480,000 pages, issues slipped through unnoticed. Content creators could upload images without alt text or skip accessibility fields entirely. Annual accessibility reviews weren’t enough. Limited testing cycles meant problems surfaced only after pages were live, often triggered by student feedback or formal complaints.
The deeper challenge was cultural. More than 550 active contributors touched digital content every day, but accessibility felt abstract, optional, and disconnected from their workflow. Teams lacked a clear, repeatable way to understand where issues were emerging or how to fix them early.
GW needed a transformation that went beyond compliance; one that connected monitoring insights to daily decisions and made accessibility feel practical, learnable, and embedded rather than bolted on after launch.
“Having that ongoing dialogue with the folks at Siteimprove has been really helpful in pulling in our stakeholders and giving them the opportunity to see the real-world impact of an accessibility issue on their site.”
The Solve
GW responded with a full-scale accessibility modernization that reshaped how digital work happens across the university. They expanded Siteimprove to an enterprise-level instance and made it the system of record for quality, visibility, and accountability. Monitoring insights became daily guidance for content creators, developers, and site owners.
During the migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10, GW rebuilt accessibility into the foundation of their CMS. Accessible templates and themes were created from the ground up, required fields prevented contributors from bypassing alt text, and documented standards for color contrast, semantic HTML, keyboard navigation, and PDF accessibility were baked directly into workflows. “Over time, 1,006 Siteimprove policy rules automated detection of potential issues across the entire portfolio,” says Terry Carter, Web Associate at GW.
Training and enablement made the system sustainable. GW ran bi-monthly accessibility sessions supported by Siteimprove Learning Hub components and required a digital accessibility assessment every two years. More than 700 contributors completed training. Daily virtual office hours gave teams real-time help during content creation, a hands-on model that accelerated learning and reduced repeat mistakes.
"Having that ongoing dialogue with the folks at Siteimprove has been really helpful in pulling in our stakeholders and giving them the opportunity to see the real-world impact of an accessibility issue on their site," says Carter. He continues, "Not everyone knows how to use a screen reader; many people have never seen that or really thought about it. Being able to pull people in ad hoc and give them the opportunity to learn and to work to a solution has been really helpful."
Finally, GW replaced slow annual reviews with bi-weekly manual testing sessions. Siteimprove Professional Services delivered focused reports ahead of each meeting, and fixes were verified live during the sessions. Issues were caught before rollout, not after launch. It was a shift that dramatically improved speed, confidence, and collaboration for teams at GW.
Accessibility stopped being a compliance task. It became the way GW worked, at every stage of the content lifecycle and beyond.
