Web Accessibility Resources

This document is an index to some resources on website accessibility provided by CALS Web Services and DoIT.

Audience

Russell Labs faculty, staff, and students; Hub staff

Note

This document is intended to help you find and navigate the official UW-Madison accessibility resources, not to replace them. Official guidance may change over time and may not always be reflected immediately in this KB.

Overview

The Federal government requires universities to make all our websites accessible. If the sites are not accessible, they can create barriers to people with disabilities.

People with disabilities navigate the web in a variety of ways:

People who are blind may use screen readers, which are devices that speak the text that appears on a screen.
People with visual impairments may increase the size of the webpage text within the web browser.
People who are deaf or hard of hearing may use captioning.
People whose disabilities affect their ability to grasp and use a mouse may use voice recognition software to control their computers and other devices with verbal commands.

To produce accessible content for websites, you need to:

Learn the basics of creating accessible content
Follow them when:
- Creating content to upload to the website, like Abobe PDFs, word processing documents, slideshows, or spreadsheets
- Creating content in the site’s editor, including adding alternate (alt) descriptions to images

Support

Website accessibility is a complex and specialized topic. Recommendations and best practices also change over time.

If you have questions about website accessibility, you should contact DoIT’s Center for User Experience. Russell Labs Administrative Hub staff cannot provide guidance on this topic, or review or audit your content for compliance.

CALS Web Services Resources

Creating Accessible Content

A basic guide that Includes links to the DoIT info below, plus info on these topics:

DoIT Resources

Comprehensive, multi-page library on accessibility from the campus web accessibility experts, the Center for User Experience.

Accessibility Basics

Includes these topics:

buttons
color contrast
image descriptions (ALT tags)
links
readability
screen magnification
tables
text formatting
titles and headings

The general concepts included cover both creating files to upload to a website, and creating content with the website editor.

Tables

Note: tables are complicated. Allow extra time when working with tables. Sometimes you have to completely rethink your approach.

The Accessibility Basics page includes two before-and-after table examples of rethinking/redesigning a table.

Sometimes it will be best to use bulleted lists instead of tables.

Course Content

Designed for instructors and instructional designers who are creating Canvas course content, including documents.

Documents Guide

These are the files you create with another program, and then upload to the website.

Includes these topics:

word processing documents
slide presentations
email
PDFs
Adobe InDesign files

Does Not Include:

spreadsheets

For guidance on spreadsheets, see:

Alternative Text for Images

Includes these topics:

Describe the image
Describe the people
Using AI for writing alternative text

Includes lots of examples.

Complex Images

Complex images could include charts, data visualizations, maps, and other graphics in formats that are accessible to sighted users as well as people with low or no vision.

Includes these topics: