Rethinking Digital Accessibility at Butler County Community College

“When it comes to digital accessibility, Modern Campus are the pros. They understand what can be done to make your website ready for things like the DOJ deadline.”

Dr. Jacqueline Kunkel | Web Manager at Butler County Community College (BC3)

The Challenge

Anyone who's managed a large web presence knows how quickly digital content can proliferate. As digital assets accumulate over years, governing them becomes increasingly difficult. When information becomes outdated or inaccessible, students and other users struggle to find what they need.

New U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) requirements have brought renewed urgency to digital accessibility in higher ed. Public colleges and universities must now ensure that every part of their digital presence meets WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. That responsibility includes PDFs, forms, policies, and other supporting documents that build up over years of publishing.

That was the challenge Dr. Jacqueline Kunkel inherited when she began her role as Web Manager at Butler County Community College (BC3). Years of files had accumulated within the Content Management System (CMS), with no folder organization, no naming convention, and limited oversight over which content still needed to be there.

“This CMS had easily over 5,000 PDFs, binaries and files. Everything was just in there.” 

Dr. Jacqueline Kunkel

Kunkel began untangling years of accumulated content, starting with an inventory of what BC3 had published. That work took on new urgency after she attended the Modern Campus User Conference in 2025.

“When I got there, everybody on the CMS side was talking about the accessibility audit,” she said. “I thought, ‘this is a major thing. We have to get ready for this.’”

Meeting the new accessibility requirements meant more than cleaning up files. It required rethinking how BC3 manages and governs content across its web presence.

The Solution

Modern Campus CMS became the operational hub for BC3's accessibility effort and ongoing content governance beyond the DOJ deadline. Built-in reporting capabilities gave Kunkel visibility into years of accumulated content, allowing her to inventory the college’s digital assets and begin making informed decisions about where to focus first. 

“Modern Campus CMS has all the tools needed to facilitate a project like this,” she said.

The reports quickly identified thousands of files that were no longer live on BC3's website. Kunkel reviewed those resources alongside colleagues across campus. 

“The motto that I ran with when I was doing this removal was, ‘Do we need this?’” she said.

Working with Modern Campus Managed Services, Kunkel turned those findings into a structured remediation plan. This offering supplements institutional web teams with specialized expertise, bringing additional capacity to support complex web projects.

“The biggest value was having a Managed Services project manager to work with. Her team was able to tackle the behind-the-scenes responsibilities while I managed the next steps and focused on my own daily job tasks and projects.”

Dr. Jacqueline Kunkel

Here’s how BC3 approached the work: 

• Accessibility checks established the baseline. Kunkel began by using Modern Campus CMS accessibility checks and binary reports to build a complete inventory of BC3's digital content. That gave her a clear picture of what had accumulated over the years.  

• Naming conventions brought order to the CMS. Consistent naming conventions and folder organization were implemented before reviewing every live PDF. That made it easier to determine what still belonged online and what could be retired.  

• Content moved into more accessible formats. Working with departments across campus, the team moved information into accessible web pages wherever possible. They rebuilt the remaining PDFs using standardized templates.  

The result wasn't just a more accessible website. It was a more sustainable approach to managing and governing web content.  

The Results

BC3 eliminated thousands of legacy PDFs and strengthened its digital accessibility 

BC3 significantly reduced the amount of digital content it needed to govern. A more streamlined content library allows the web team to spend less time sorting through legacy files and more time maintaining active content. That makes accessibility easier to sustain as requirements continue to evolve.

The biggest gains came from eliminating content that no longer served a purpose. Unused PDFs in the CMS went from over 10,000 to 0.  

“There are no PDFs on my CMS that aren’t being seen by anybody,” said Kunkel. “For PDFs that are live, we went from 172 down to 37. That makes me happy.”

Departments became active partners in content governance 

Accessibility quickly became more than a web team initiative.  

“A lot of people across campus heard that I was doing this project, and they were very receptive and on board,” Kunkel said.  

As departments reviewed their own content and decided what still belonged online, maintaining digital content became more collaborative across the institution. 

Governance became part of BC3's publishing workflow

Rather than treating accessibility as a one-time remediation effort, BC3 incorporated regular reporting into its publishing workflow. That ongoing discipline helps the college identify issues before they accumulate and ensures the improvements BC3 made today continue to shape how the institution manages digital content tomorrow.

“I'm not done. We continue regular binary reports. I do these at least monthly for any binary. I still need that check so I can make sure I stay in line with that for my CMS and my subdomain.” 

Dr. Jacqueline Kunkel