Guidelines for Accessible Web Design / Maintenance
It is essential to ensure that your websites are accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to all staff and students.
When designing / maintaining websites ensure you:
Designing your site:
- Consider accessibility from the very beginning
- Use consistent navigation
- Use a range of media on your webpages
- The use of multimedia can produce an accessible browsing experience for users with a variety of disabilities and a variety of preferred learning styles
- Where multimedia is used, ensure information is available for those who cannot access that medium. For example, you can have alt text on images, or you can have a textual or sound file alternative describing an animation
- Seek feedback from users regarding accessibility
Accessibility Testing:
Do some or all of the following:
- Ask potential user who may experience problems to check your site for accessibility (e.g. visually impaired, colour blind or dyslexic users).
- View your site through a text reader,
- View your site with a screen reader,
- View the site under different conditions (e.g. using different web browsers),
- Run an automatic accessibility validation tool,
- Commission an accessibility audit.
Everyday Web Maintenance:
Text
- Use simple language.
- Avoid dense text.
- Ensure all uploaded documents are accessible.
- Give the size of files (e.g. Word, 55kb)
Images
- Include alt text for images and AV.
- Use longdesc for more complex images and AV.
Colour contrast
- Avoid pure black on pure white.
- Avoid navigation that relies on colour (e.g. click green button for yes, red for no).
Headings
- Apply headings consistently.
- Do not skip heading levels.
Tables and forms
- Format to be accessible.
Hyperlinks
- Make hyperlinks meaningful (more than 'click here).
- Regularly review your hyperlinks and fix any that are broken.