The U.S. Department of Education has made every effort to make its Doing What Works website accessible to people with a wide range of abilities. To achieve these goals, the website’s design and content was developed following the guidelines set forth by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508).

Doing What Works overview, priority area introduction, topic multimedia overview, guided tour and learning cycle presentations (Flash)

• Use the “CC” button to turn captions on/off.
• Use the following keys to control the presentation:
• P – play/pause
• R – restart
• C – Closed Caption on/off

When a graphic is used on the Doing What Works website, alternative text (ALT) is provided; this is a short, literal description of what the image represents. This alternative text is displayed in the browser of people using non-graphical or text browsers, users who may have images "turned off," and other users who may have difficulty viewing the graphics. Otherwise, for people using graphical browsers, such as Internet Explorer, the alternative text appears when the pointer hovers over the graphic.

Additionally, for complex presentation, more detailed information is offered through a “D” link (description link). The letter “D” is placed next to the presentation on a web page that links off to a text description of the presentation. This enables a blind user or users of text browsers to understand the content of the presentation without viewing it.

The Doing What Works website uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to achieve a consistent style of presentation across all webpages. The CSS itself applies to each webpage and is used to specify such characteristics as color, font type, font size, and spacing for a particular feature. However, users can choose to use the website CSS, their own customized CSS, or "turn off" CSS altogether. Accordingly, the websites have been tested to be usable with the style sheets "turned off."

The Doing What Works web site provides logical and consistent navigation. The target of links have been identified, and linked text is brief and meaningful to ensure readability when read out of context. Linked text, if read by itself, informs the user of what to expect and is helpful when scanning information. It also assists users whose technology can list all of the links of a webpage and takes into consideration people who may be using alternative computer access technology.

All navigation links are location sensitive; that is, the current page is displayed as text to provide the user with an indication as to their current location within the structure of the web site. However, links such as “SkipHeader” and “SkipNav” have been programmed into each page as they are helpful for enabling people using text-browsers and people using alternative computer access technology to directly access the content of a page.