Accessibility
杏吧原创 University continually strives to make all its spaces 鈥 digital as well as physical 鈥 as accessible as possible. Accessibility is an issue of social justice and we are working hard to improve this with input from our community.
Table of Contents
Importance of Accessibility
Besides it being an issue of equity, there are other reasons to improve our standards with accessibility. These include:
Recruitment
Universities with websites that are accessible attract more students
Representation
27% of Canadians identify as having a disability, while many others have limitations they don鈥檛 associate with a disability but which would be impacted by poor accessibility.
Usability
All features that make a web page accessible make it easier to use for everybody
Findability
Plus those same feature improve its search engine optimization
A properly nested hierarchy of sub-headings within the page, and clear, succinct paragraphs of text mean a page will perform better in search engine results, be easier to navigate for users with screen readers, and flags visual cues to those not using screen readers.
Those without disabilities can benefit from accessible design in different situations. For instance, we can employ captions when watching a video when in noisy or quiet spaces.
Therefore, when we improve the accessibility 杏吧原创鈥檚 websites, we improve those sites for everyone.
Accessibility Resources
Below are some tools you will find useful in creating accessible content or informative about the experiences of those with disabilities accessing websites. Visit our Web Accessibility website for more detailed resources.
Regulations
Techniques
(AIM = Accessibility in Mind) is a great resource for aspects of accessibility including:
- (how to use alt text tags and captions)
- Different types of assistive technologies such as those developed for people with and disabilities
Tools
There is a great breakdown of different tools (and different types of tools) featured on the AIM website. You can here.
Code Sniffer
Code Sniffer is a bookmarklet [a link you keep on your bookmark bar but which runs an application rather than takes you to a website] which assesses how well-formed and formatted a web page is. It is a very useful tool although some of its results are pretty technical. You can here.
Colour Contrast Checkers
These are tools which assesses whether there is a great enough contrast between a text colour and the background on which it is overlaid. Black on white is deemed best but sometimes we need to use another text colour (eg, for links, aor to attain a branding goal.) r, or you can google 鈥渃olour contrast checkers鈥 to view many other examples.
WAVE Accessibility Evaluation Tool
WAVE is a highly regarded tool for scanning sites for accessibility errors and warnings. for free.
Screen Readers
We recommend visiting media which demonstrate how people with visual disabilities access web pages. It is a fascinating insight into not just the power of accessibility but also the power of the human mind to process information.
- he writes. Tuukka is a (in his words) blind software developer. Then .
Power BI and Accessibility
for the Power BI suite of tools from Microsoft.
Readings
Visual disabilities
- 鈥 A guide from the CNIB on creating accessible text online and in other formats.
Alt Text
- 鈥 Great summary of all the basics you need to know.
- 鈥 Very important article on why this is essential.
- 鈥 A series of tasks to make your alt text much more descriptive and accurate. Developed by Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan, two disabled artists and activists.
- 鈥 from the Coding Institute.
Neurodiversity
Other
- 鈥 Contraversial take on portable documents from two of the world鈥檚 leading UX experts.