Web Accessibility at Union

Making content accessible allows visitors with disabilities the opportunity to access and interact with the information.

The following disabilities can affect site visitors

  • Visual
    • Clarity
    • Low Vision (consider the increase in senior citizens accessing the web)
    • Color Blindness
  • Auditory
  • Motor
  • Cognitive

General Content (text and images)

Assistive technology like screen readers will start at the top of a page and read through all of the content - consider this linear interpretation  of content when organizating information.

Avoid "click here" in links - use meaningful text as the link.

Give images a proper alternative text description - brief but accurate.

Provide a good heading structure using the options in the format drop down menu.  Headings enhance navigation through content so visitors can quickly assess whether to continue reading or skip further down the page.

Color and Text in Images

Carefully consider the use of color and text in images considering color-blind and visitors with poor vision.  Text within images will not scale if a visitor uses software to zoom into portions of a page.

Video & Audio Content

Text transcripts should be made available and all video should include captions.

PDF

PDF files are not accessible by default.  The following video outlines creating an accessible pdf from a properly formatted word document. For more information please read this article which outlines how to make pdf's accessible via Adobe Acrobat

Tables

Tables should have captions and row/column header