Web Accessibility
You may have noticed a flurry of training and info sessions about web accessibility this winter. Matt Ryan and Doug Bratland from Web Services partnered with Chris Dallager from Accessibility Resources on this effort. From early December through late February they delivered four presentations and held a drop-in work session. Over 150 Carleton staff and faculty attended these events.
Web accessibility is defined as “the degree to which a website is usable by as many people as possible.” We have people with a wide variety of disabilities who need to use our sites. And Carleton has both a legal and an ethical responsibility to provide web content that all our constituents — with our without disabilities — can access.
Five Basic Steps
The presentations focused on five things website editors can do to make sure their sites work for everyone:
- Provide good image descriptions
- Use descriptive link text
- Use headings
- Write & edit text so it is easy to read
- Add captions to videos
Tools for Improved Accessibility
To help site editors improve their content, Reason now includes an Accessibility Review Tool. The tool will scan a site’s content and flag common accessibility issues. Such issues include missing alt text on images, ambiguous link text, and URLs as links.
The section on writing generated a good deal of discussion. To help authors write accessible content, Reason now displays a reading ease score in its text entry fields. When text gets a poor readability score, site editors can try revising it to improve the score. The score updates in real-time as you change text.
As we migrate to WordPress, Web Services will look for more tools that can help us in this effort. And they will continue to offer training and help to anyone who wants to improve the accessibility of their sites.
Resources
- Web Accessibility Overview
- Web Accessibility Presentation (video)
- Five Steps to Better Web Accessibility (PDF)
For more information on web accessibility, contact Matt Ryan, Doug Bratland, or Chris Dallager.
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