UAB is committed to ensuring equal access to web information and technology for its current and prospective faculty, staff, and students. It is important to remember that some visitors to UAB websites may be unable to read text, see graphics or hear content that have not been properly prepared and presented. For example:
- People who are blind or have low vision may use special programs to read your site aloud.
- Color-blind visitors won't be able to recognize bright red text you may use to bring attention to important information.
- Some users do not use a mouse or may only use a text-based web browser that uses the keyboard for navigation. These text-based browsers do not show images.
- Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors may not hear the audio portions of videos presented on your site.
For these reasons, UAB is working to ensure that our websites and digital content is created using accessible design. Accessible design helps those with disabilities understand and use our websites and web-based class materials more effectively. As a communications professional working in our CMS and other technology, it's up to you to make sure that your website is accessible to as many visitors as possible.
Please note that the following information is not a comprehensive policy list. Visit W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 requirements (success criteria) and techniques for comprehensive advice.
Accessibility Tools
- Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility. This page helps you start to assess the accessibility of a web page. With these simple steps, you can get an idea whether or not accessibility is addressed in even the most basic way.
- Color Contrast Checker. Allows you to input the colors on the page to tell you if the colors are an acceptable color contrast. You can also use it to experiment by making your text or background darker or lighter until you reach acceptable contrast levels.
- Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool. Can help you determine whether animations or video in your content are likely to cause seizures.
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. Can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content.
- W3C Markup Validation Service. Checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc.
- W3C CSS Validation Service. Checks the validity of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X)HTML documents with style sheets.
Accessibility Guides for Web Content
This page contains an overview of checks that webpage content should be subject to prior to publication.
Accessibility Guides for Web Elements
Website accessibility depends on the website's code as well as its content. If you are creating a website or other online content, you should keep these guides in mind.