Digital Accessibility

From W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, "Introduction to Web Accessibility." Updated 7 March 2024.

Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:

• perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web
• contribute to the Web

Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including:

• auditory
• cognitive
• neurological
• physical
• speech
• visual

Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities, for example:

• people using mobile phones, smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, different input modes, etc.
• older people with changing abilities due to ageing
• people with “temporary disabilities” such as a broken arm or lost glasses
• people with “situational limitations” such as in bright sunlight or in an environment where they cannot listen to audio
• people using a slow Internet connection, or who have limited or expensive bandwidth

It is likely you will have the widest reach with your communications over the Web, so it is important to be mindful of the common lapses in this realm as well as the tools available to check and improve your own practices. Most of your web documents—including those on LibGuides, Cascade, and Canvas—will be formatted at some level in HTML. Fortunately the current version of HTML5 is built with accessibility in mind, and many content management systems provide tools to simplify the process of making pages accessible.

In brief, the basic best practices for web accessibility are:

• Include alternate text for all images
• Utilize Header tags to structure hierarchy of concepts within documents
• Hyperlinks should be descriptive of the destination page, not just "click here"
• Avoid tables except when presenting tabular data
• Text should be to the point and easy to read

Keeping these principles in mind will make your content more accessible, regardless of platform, though many content management systems provide robust and tool-specific accessibility tools, as follows: