Accessibility Tips
Website accessibility is crucial to ensure equal access to information and services for people with disabilities, covering sensory, physical, and cognitive needs. It is vital for fostering inclusivity, meeting legal compliance (like the ADA), improving SEO rankings and enhancing user experience for everyone.
The following tips will help ensure that the pages you create in Modern Campus CMS are accessible for your website visitors.
- Alt Text and descriptive text
Alt text is an absolute requirement for images that you insert into your web pages. In fact, Modern Campus CMS will not permit you to publish a page unless an image has alt text. If you need help creating descriptive alt text or a caption for an image, several tools exist, including the Image Accessibility Generator from Arizona State University. - Proper table usage
Tables are to be used for tabular data only. Never use tables to create columns for your web page content. If you need to use columns, we have a Column Layout Component built just for this purpose. If you need to use a table for data, we have the Table Component which is responsive for mobile devices and setup to be accessible. - Heading structure and usage
Headings must follow the proper logical, hierarchical structure. This means you cannot jump from an H2 heading to an H4 heading. Do not select a heading based on it's font-size, always follow the proper order. - Color contrast
If you don't take colors into consideration, your website visitors may not be able to read your information correctly. This is especially noticeable when text is overlaid on top of images or text is placed on a colored background. You can check your color contrast with online tools such as the WebAIM Contrast Checker. - Descriptive links
Do not use text for your links such as here or click here. Your links should explain their purpose. For example...
Do this: View the College of Natural Science homepage.
Do not do this: Click here to visit the College of Natural Science homepage.
Now you might be wondering why some of the buttons you find around the college websites aren't very descriptive. You might see some that say "Learn more" or "Read more". These buttons have had additional information attached to them that is accessible by screen readers to make them more descriptive. - Video Captions and Transcripts
Video and multimedia content is great, but not everyone can enjoy video in the same manner. Ensuring that your videos are captioned will ensure that people who can't hear the audio can also enjoy the content. Having a transcript available will also ensure that those who cannot hear or see the video, can also enjoy the content using assistive technology such as a braile display.