Part 1: An Introduction to Web Accessibility

Think about your institution's policies and how they are published digitally: Can the text be highlighted word for word? Do they include hot links with meaningful text? Do your logos and images include alt text? Were they formatted and designed using styles? If not, your policies may be inaccessible to many of the students, staff, faculty, and visitors to your institution's website.

This post will cover the basics of web accessibility as it pertains to our roles as policy administrators. My next post will dive deeper into accessibility and how you can utilize built-in Microsoft Word tools to generate, efficiently and quickly, documents that translate into fully accessible web and digital content.

Why We Should Care about Accessibility

Web accessibility is one of the most critical issues facing higher education today. New web technologies have been a boon for distance and online education, yet 11% of undergraduates have a disability that impairs access to websites and other online and digital content. Many of us who live without such impairments rarely consider if the documents and digital content we create can be read using a screen reader for someone with a visual disability or navigated with voice software for those unable to use a mouse and keyboard. This is why the World Wide Web Consortium, better known as W3C, created the Web Accessibility Initiative. Under this initiative are standards to make sure the internet can easily be used by as many people as possible. These standards are referred to as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and have become the universally accepted resource for maintaining optimal web accessibility.

While WCAG guidelines and web accessibility may seem daunting, it costs significantly less time and resources to make a site accessible than it does to procure the lawyer to protect you in an accessibility claim. In recent years, thousands of complaints have been filed and fines levied against institutions of higher education for failing to provide equal access to digital resources and education.

However, the issue of accessibility extends beyond legal obligations. While laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act exist to protect individuals with disabilities and ensure equal access to the same resources as everyone else, ensuring that all users have access to the policies of your institution is critical for both themselves and the community, and well—it’s the right thing to do. We, as the creators and curators of the laws and standards that govern our institutions, have a special responsibility to affirm our commitment to serving the needs of every member of our communities. If we expect every individual to abide by the policies and guidelines we establish, we must ensure every individual is able to find, access, and understand the documents and digital content our offices produce and publish.

The Basics of Web Accessibility

The WCAG 2.0 consists of 12 guidelines with four arching principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR). These principles and guidelines relate to one simple question: can the users with varying degree of ability ingest the content on your site? Remembering the principles of POUR when creating documents can help your policies to be accessibility-ready and avoid having to make time-consuming corrections in the future. These principles are explained in detail below:

Perceivable

The content needs to be presented in different ways, including assistive technologies, without losing its meaning. The easiest way to do so is by providing alt-text for non-text content. The content should be easier to see and hear.

Operable

This principle ensures that the content is easy to operate upon. Web accessibility issues are not synonymous with visibility issues, as is the popular myth. They are as much a problem for people with hearing disability as for a person with a neurological or cognitive disorder. The content on the website needs to be accessible with a keyboard for people with limited motor functions, people with color blindness, and avoiding the use of content and types that cause seizure.

Understandable

Is the text readable for people with difference in visual ability? This principle ensures that the content appears and operates in a predictable way. This specifically focuses on the issues related to color contrast.

Robust

Any content—written or multimedia—should be future proof. Efforts should be made to maximize compatibility with current and future user tools. Before the dawn of the 21st century, screen readers were not as popular as they are 18 years later. A decade back even mobile phones were not as ubiquitous.

Moving Forward

Now that we understand the guiding principles, we are in a better position to deliver a better user experience to all. One thing worth highlighting: accessibility issues are easier to address before they manifest on your policies and documents, not after. My next post will cover simple steps you can take while writing policies and creating other documents and templates to ensure your documents translate to accessibility-compliant digital and web content from the start.

Now, I would like to hear from you. Is your institution currently facing any issues with accessibility? Do your digital policy documents already apply accessibility standards? And does your institution already have a policy regarding accessibility?