Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes. Both Federal and State law require institutions of higher learning to provide accessible web pages.
There are many reasons why your web site should be accessible.
- It is easy to do. It is very simple to re-examine a web site and include many elements that will immediately make the site more accessible. Often this does not require changing the visual appearance or design of the site.
- It is the right thing to do. Making your web site work for everyone can make a huge difference to users with disabilities. Making an inaccessible web site means that a potential customer, prospective student, faculty member, etc. might not be able to get the information you are trying to share. You are posting information on your web site with the intent of sharing information, so why would you make it impossible for visitors to use it?
- It won’t look different. Making simple changes is often enough to make a site accessible without changing its appearance.
- It’s the law. Web accessibility is something to take seriously. The nationwide retailer Target, for example, was sued by the National Foundation for the Blind because their web site was found to be not accessible.
The cost associated with making web sites accessible is a concern to all departments on campus. However, the cost is generally minimal if accessibility principles are incorporated into the site from the beginning. Retrofitting, on the other hand, is far more expensive and time consuming.
The most important thing to understand is that people use the Web in very different ways. A site should therefore present information in a way that people can access it regardless of what kind of hardware or software they are using, and regardless of how they navigate through a site. Web designers cannot assume that everyone uses the same kinds of devices the same way.
While certainly not an exhaustive list, the following is representative of many common accessibility mistakes. Note that many, if not most, of these can be found and fixed by writing your web pages in XHTML and running them through an HTML validator.
images without alternative text
lack of alternative text for imagemap hot spots
audio or video without captions or transcripts
lack of alternative information for users who can’t access frames or scripts
tables that are difficult to decipher when linearized
sites where color is the only way to distinguish elements, or with poor color contrast
fonts that are fixed-sized. Fonts should be relatively sized in a CSS
form fields that are not properly labeled
pages with long navigation menus without a “Skip-Navigation” link
The percentage of people with disabilities is between 10% and 20%. Not all disabilities affect access to information technologies such as the Web, but many do. Something else to keep in mind… for people with disabilities, online access is sometimes even more critical than for the general population, who may have an easier time accessing traditional sources of information.
No. Making a web site accessible is more about including good design elements than removing them. Nearly all sophisticated and visually attractive web technologies can be rendered in an accessible manner, if designed with accessibility in mind. Creative web designers are able to keep the web site visually pleasing and, at the same time, make it accessible for more people to access the site.
In a business environment where the creation and maintenance of accessible websites is readily achievable, the use of an “ad hoc” approach to accommodating a person with a disability does not offer equal or comparable access. There may be times in very specific instances where something cannot be made accessible and providing the accommodation will be required. However, this approach should supplement, rather than take the place of, providing an accessible technology infrastructure.
While there are many ways for the blind to access the web, they all revolve around providing alternative methods to access information. WebAIM offers several key concepts to keep in mind while developing your site.
A screen reader is a software application that interprets what is on the computer screen and conveys the information to the user through a different context, often through sound. Several screen readers are available, both commercially and for free download, but most users on the Texas A&M campus that need to use a screen reader use the JAWS or Window Eyes.
Text-to-speech applications , generally referred to as screen reader process digital content like documents and web pages into spoken word. Text is read aloud through computers or mobile devices. Text-to-speech applications provide alternatives or enhancement for visual and cognitive abilities and assist anyone needing to reduce eye strain.
Color blindness is not a true form of blindness, but rather a problem in the way color is processed. People with this vision problem have difficulty distinguishing certain colors, such as red and green or blue and yellow. About 10% of the male population has some form of color blindness, less than 1% of females. True color blindness (shades of gray only) is extremely rare. Color blindness can be compensated for through the selection of colors used.
Yes! There are a whole range of potential disabilities, almost all of which can be mitigated to some extent by accessible coding practices. The hearing disabled, for example, might not be able to listen to a podcast or audiocast, but if you provide transcripts and/or captioning they will still be able to follow along. Motor impairment can make the use of a computer mouse difficult or impossible, so “tabindex” and other keyboard shortcuts are encouraged as alternative navigation methods. Vision impairment might not mean complete blindness, so creating text elements that can be enlarged through keyboard or CSS might allow them to read the page.
NO! In almost all cases text-only sites are not only unnecessary but highly discouraged. Proper use of CSS and appropriate tagging of non-text elements should in most cases make the site accessible to anyone.
Yes. State and federal law specifically exclude this as a rationale for not making sites accessible. All workplace infrastructure, including IT, must be accessible in preparation for future employees with disabilities so that they can be productive from the moment they begin their employment.
Yes, an accessible Web site includes the accessibility of all its contents, including documents, forms, and other digital objects (multimedia, graphics, etc.). A process for ensuring the accessibility of the content is critical to a web accessibility policy. For more information about how to create accessible content, please visit our Building An Accessible Website page.
Follow the guidance in our PDF Accessibility remediation video.
Tags are labels representing every object in the PDF. The classify which objects are paragraphs, headings, lists, tables, links, images (figures), and more. Combined, they form a “tag tree,” a linear, skeletal representation of the document. This also provides a logical reading order for the PDF. Crucially, assistive technology like screen readers uses tags to convey their meaning to users. Otherwise, for example, someone may not know if a sentence is a list, a heading, a link, or just a plain paragraph.
It depends. We encourage everyone to use webpages, as HTML is generally a more accessible and easily-editable format. PDF forms should be converted into electronic web applications (e.g., JotForm, Google Forms). But PDFs are not going extinct, either.
Accessibility always starts at the beginning. Ensure your source document (e.g., Word file) is accessible first. Use that application’s built-in accessibility checkers, if available. Keep your PDFs text-based and linear. Tables should contain relational (1:1) data, no merged cells and only one header row. Follow our remediation guide for more information.
Reading order is the order in which the keyboard, screen readers, and other assistive technology interact with the document. The reading order should adhere to a logical sequence: left-right, up-down.
First, and most importantly, people with disabilities may not be able to access, understand, and interact with your PDF. This can make their experience frustrating, time-consuming, and needlessly strenuous. Second, your PDF may be audited as part of an accessibility test, either by an internal or external party, and necessitate immediate remediation.
Yes! However, it is generally more difficult to remediate. If you still have access to the source document (e.g., Microsoft Word file, Adobe InDesign file), it’s always better to make those accessible first, and then convert the file to PDF. However, Adobe Acrobat has a variety of accessibility remediation tools.
Both state administrative code and federal law require websites to be accessible. A distinction is drawn between pages that are used for instruction and pages that are used for information. State administrative code, “TAC §206 – State Web Sites” applies to informational pages. Pages that are used for instructional purposes must be accessible under both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Section §508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was re-authorized in 1998 and included web accessibility requirements that were later developed into a set of §508 Accessibility Guidelines. While these guidelines explicitly refer to pages used in instruction, state and university guidelines use §508 as the foundation upon which they were built, so in effect, §508 applies to all university web sites.
Texas Administrative Code (TAC) §206 is an administrative law which outlines requirements for state of Texas web sites in four distinct areas: Accessibility/Usability, Privacy/Security, Required Policies, and Linking/Indexing of state web sites. The statute was published in the Texas Register on March 15, 2002 and was has been updated several times.
Maybe. As defined by TAC §206, a Key Public Entry Point (KPEP) a web page that a state agency or institution of higher education has specifically designed for members of the general public to access official information (e.g., the governing or authoritative documents) from the agency or institution of higher education. A list of these pages is posted online on another part of this site.
There are hundreds of useful articles, tutorial, and resources on the Internet to help with web accessibility. For more specific issues, a simple Google search will also return many worthwhile resources.
Yes. The university is currently evaluating a site-license for accessible validation software. Just remember, even the best tool can only do about half of the work for you; there is not a substitute for a knowledgeable webmaster incorporating proper accessibility concepts into the site design from the very beginning.