ADA Compliance
All people.ua.edu websites should comply with UA's Web Resources Accessibility Policy, which adheres to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Level AA; otherwise known as WCAG 2.0 AA (visit the links for complete details).
What does that mean for you? First, realize that not everyone who accesses your website will have the same physical or mental abilities. People with vision impairments often use a screen reader to access the web. A screen reader will "read" (speak) the content of a page. The video below provides an overview of how screen readers assist people who are blind read the Web and electronic documents.
What does that mean for you? First, realize that not everyone who accesses your website will have the same physical or mental abilities. People with vision impairments often use a screen reader to access the web. A screen reader will "read" (speak) the content of a page. The video below provides an overview of how screen readers assist people who are blind read the Web and electronic documents.
Persons with motor control difficulties may not be able to use a mouse. Therefore, make sure that all functions are available from the keyboard (try tabbing from link to link). To better understand this concept and it's importance, visit the page on Motor Disabilities at https://webaim.org/articles/motor/motordisabilities.
It is critical that you, as the website owner and designer, construct your site with good organizational methods. Here are the major things to consider:
- Page Titles - Use the title element to add a title on each page.
- Titles and Subject Headings – Use the title element for titles and subject headings. You are welcome to change the size of the font for subheadings.
- Alignment – Use the left, center, or right alignment rather than adding in extra spaces or tabs.
- Justification - No fully justified text. According to webaim.org, "Fully-justified text forces each line to extend to both left and right margins by adjusting word and letter spacing. Although the resulting presentation may appear more tidy at first, these spacing variations impair readability. Fully-justified text can also create distracting "rivers of white"—patterns of unintended whitespace that distract the eye from the natural flow of the text." webaim.org/techniques/textlayout/
- PDF files uploaded – ensure all PDFs are accessible. To check a pdf, open the document and highlight a portion of the text. If you can highlight only a portion, then the pdf is accessible. If however, the entire document becomes highlighted, then it is considered an image and not text. This can be fixed by running the file through the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature in Adobe Acrobat or some other software. The purpose is to make sure the text appears as text and not an image.
- Drop-down menus can be used on your site, however, you must add a link to each menu item from the top-level page. Not everyone uses a mouse to navigate through a website and that is the only way drop-down menus appear. See the Drop-Down Menu page for details. Also note, that when adding new pages, you will see an option to add a "non-clickable menu". Do NOT use this option as it is inaccessible.
- Photos - Add alt text to images you add with the Image element, gallery element, or slideshow element - http://people.ua.edu/alternative-text.html. It is not recommended to embed text in a photo. The text then becomes a part of the image and is unreadable by screen readers.
- Video – Should be captioned. Note: If students are required to watch a video as part of your curriculum, you are required to caption the video. If the video is not captioned, provide a transcript. YouTube can help. UA also offers assistance through the Technology Accessibility office.
- Audio – Should have a written transcript.
Please note that we take accessibility very seriously!
Your site must be in compliance before it is published.
We highly recommend you view our Accessibility Guidelines for more details about each of these items.
Your site must be in compliance before it is published.
We highly recommend you view our Accessibility Guidelines for more details about each of these items.