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Designing Accessible Web Content. Brian Brautigam Alternate Media Specialist Riverside City College. What does Accessibility Mean?. Accessibility enables a student with a disability to use the Web in a manner similar to someone without a disability.
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Designing Accessible Web Content Brian Brautigam Alternate Media Specialist Riverside City College
What does Accessibility Mean? • Accessibility enables a student with a disability to use the Web in a manner similar to someone without a disability. • In other words, we are providing equal access.
How do students with disabilities access the web? Students with disabilities can access the web using specialized hardware and software called Assistive Computer Technologies.
Users who are blind… …may use screen reading software to hear the content of the screen
Users who are deaf… …require audiovisual resources to be captioned for accessibility
Users with Mobility Impairments …may use speech recognition technology to access web content
Users with learning differences… Will benefit from a logical, well-laid out site with consistent markup
Quick Tips for Web Accessibility • PicturesUse the “alt” attribute to describe the picture. • Graphs, Charts and other complex imagesUse the “Longdesc” attribute.
Quick Tips for Web Accessibility • Heading Styles • Use “H1, H2, etc.” when marking up text. Disabled Student Services Office Hours The office is open from 7 a.m.-5:30 p.m. for your convenience… Staff We are staffed with friendly people who love their jobs.
Quick Tips for Web Accessibility • Hyperlinks. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid “click here.”
For Example… • Instead of this:To read an article about World War II pilots click here • Or this:World War II Pilots Article:(http://www.cnn.com/2008/wwii/20/wwii.pilots/index.htm) • DO THIS:Read World War II pilots article on CNN.com
Quick Tips for Web Accessibility • Tables. • Mark up tables with the “Scope” and “Header” attributes • Use the “Summary” attribute to explain the contents of the table.
Quick Tips for Web Accessibility • Multimedia. Provide captioning of video and transcripts of audio.
Why is all this necessary? Accessibility is not a new concept. Ramps, wide doorways, elevators and accessible restrooms are an accepted part of campus architecture. Accessible web site design simply makes our “virtual architecture” accessible too.