Web Accessibility

• Ensuring people of all abilities have equal access to web content

• Disability Discrimination Act – Web Access Advisory notes 2010

• Required by law (2006) in the USA

• Required for Government Websites in Australia by end of 2014

• Important for good web practice, SEO, and equal access

What is Web Accessibility

• A policy of the Department of Finance for all Government Websites

• Mandates conformance with WCAG 2.0 AA standard by 31 Dec 2014

• The what?... Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.0, level AA

Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy for Government Websites

4 Principles – Web content must be:

• Perceivable

• Operable

• Understandable

• Robust

WCAG 2.0 Summary

Principle 1 - Perceivable

• Provide text alternatives for non-text content.

• Provide captions and other alternatives for multimedia.

• Create content that can be presented in different ways, including by assistive technologies, without losing meaning.

• Make it easier for users to see and hear content.

WCAG 2.0 Summary

Principle 2 – Operable

• Make all functionality available from a keyboard.

• Give users enough time to read and use content.

• Do not use content that causes seizures.

• Help users navigate and find content.

WCAG 2.0 Summary

Principle 3 – Understandable

• Make text readable and understandable.

• Make content appear and operate in predictable ways.

• Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

WCAG 2.0 Summary

Principle 4 – Robust

• Maximize compatibility with current and future user tools.

WCAG 2.0 Summary

Alt Text

<img src="xxx.jpg" alt="Getting to Uni" width="980" height="500"/>

Alt text: “Getting to Uni”

Alt text: “Student looking through microscope”

Text Alignment

✗ ✗ ✓

Heading Structure

To download the campus map click here.

Download the campus map. ✓

Link Text

✗

• HTML is the most accessible format

• Word or Rich Text documents are also acceptable

• PDFs cause problems!! Use with caution.

• Refer to web resources for making PDFs accessible, ORprovide a Word or HTML alternative.

Accessible Documents

• To be accessible a video must be captioned or have a transcript available in an accessible format

• Captions must not be “burnt in” to the video, but be available using a closed captioning service, such as provided by YouTube.

• YouTube can help with this!!

Video Captioning

Video Captioning

Video Captioning

Video Captioning

Video Captioning

Video Captioning

Video Captioning

• Add Alt Text to Images• Align text Left-justified• Structure web pages and documents logically• Use meaningful link text• Use HTML first, then Word Documents, lastly PDFs• Caption all videos

• AVOID EMBEDDING FLASH ELEMENTS!!

Summary

• Web Services Unit: uws.edu.au/wsu• Google “WCAG 2.0” or “Web Accessibility Checklist”

Resources

Questions

Web Accessibility