Web Accessibility

Best Practices for Content

Web content is considered accessible when all visitors — regardless of physical or developmental abilities or impairments — are able to access the presented information. Academic content is presented in a variety of ways and students use a variety of technologies to navigate our content.

Using headings properly provides a hierarchy of content that allows users to navigate more efficiently.

Image descriptions help those with visual impairments understand the meaning of an image. This description is often labeled alt text or alternative text.

Links should be descriptive and unique.

It is important to select strong, contrasting color combinations and directly labeling things that are otherwise distinguished only by color on a page (think charts and graphs).

People using screen readers can have the row and column headers read aloud as they navigate through the table. Screen readers speak one cell at a time and reference the associated header cells, so the reader doesn't lose context.