Some Accessibility Suggestions

Following are some general suggestions for helping to make your pages readable to all who view them. 

• Hearing Access
• Visual Access
• Mobility Access
• Cognitive Access
• The Text-Only Alternative
• Other Sources
• Questions?

Hearing Access

• Include captions for dialog or lyrics in videos (e.g., Quicktime) for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Provide a transcript of any speech which is played back in audio (e.g., Real Audio).

Visual Access

• Describe the function of images (such as buttons) using text descriptions (alternate text). For example, a button link to the Cal State Northridge home page might might be coded as <IMG SRC = "csunlogo.gif" ALT = "Link to CSUN"> (where csunlogo.gif is the name of the image file and "Link to CSUN" is the alternate text).
• Use text descriptions to illustrate the appearance of important graphical information, such as charts and diagrams.
• Use verbal descriptions for video and animation.
• Make sure that text and graphics can be understood when viewed without color. Many visually impaired users set their own viewing "colors" (black and white) to override document colors and backgrounds.
• If you use text that blinks or scrolls, make sure the text movement can be paused.
• Use a text summary description of tables, and label rows and columns using headers. Tables can be very challenging for "screen reading software".
• If you use tables to lay out a page, be aware that screen reading software reads across each line one line at a time at a time. It does not read an entire cell before moving to the next cell to the right. For example, a table such as the following would not be easily understood. The screen reader would read first the top line in each cell and then the second line.

• Make sure a person can understand the meaning of a page if advanced multimedia features are turned off (e.g., Shockwave).

Mobility Access

• Some individuals access the keyboard by pressing one key at a time. For example, some users of mouth sticks use the numeric keypad to move the mouse cursor. For example pressing down the number 9 on the numeric keypad results in the mouse arrow moving up and to the right. Moving the mouse in this manner requires a certain level of control. If targets are very small, it is hard to direct the mouse pointer to stop on the link. Some links are represented with small dots or small gifs that are hard to stop accurately when using the keypad-mouse. A solution is to ensure that links are text links, or if they are a picture, to ensure that the image is not really small (e.g., a bullet dot). 
• People who use speech recognition to control the mouse, or a head tracking device to control the mouse run into similiar problems. 
• On a related note, low vision, blind and some users with learning disabilities utilize the Tab key to move from link to link in a web page. To be readable, links must be text links or include alternate text.

Cognitive Access

The Text-Only Alternative

Other Sources

• A Web page accessibility verifier called Bobby [from the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)]
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)]

CSU-San Marco and CSU-Fresno provide comprehensive information and tools for assessing accessibility. See:

• Accessible Websites: Making a Right a Reality (San Marcos)
• Web Access at Fresno State
• Web Accessibility Information Resources (Fresno)
• Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (Fresno)

Questions?

• If you have website accessibility questions, please contact Computer Access Training Services at (818) 677-2684.
• If you have questions about Web page design or coding, please contact the University Help Desk at (818) 677-1400 (or via email to helpdesk@csun.edu).

August 14, 2003

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ITR's technology training guides are the property of California State University, Northridge. They are intended for non-profit educational use only. Please do not use this material without citing the source.