Accessibility

OSU expects sites to be accessible to users with visual, hearing, mobility, and cognitive disabilities. The guiding principle is that all OSU sites must meet or exceed Section 508 (Priority 1) standards for accessibility.

General recommendations

• Pages that display content fully without side scrolling
• Pages that are fluid (expandable)
• Fonts that are not fixed in size
• Page size that does not exceed 75k (the smaller the better)
• Quick-load or text-only versions of all graphic-intensive pages
• Style sheets to control layout and presentation
• Text descriptions for all images (ALT tags)
• Text transcripts for all multimedia
• Text versions for all PDF files
• Avoidance of fly-out menus (vertical drop-down menus are easier to use than fly-outs for people with motor disabilities)
• No frames (they create printing problems and search engines have trouble indexing pages with frames)
• Avoidance of Flash, animation, and Java applets unless there is a clear communication value
• No blinking text
• High contrast between text and background color
• Simply-structured, consistent, and error-free code

Test your pages with multiple platforms and browsers. It is not necessary to design for the oldest browsers, however, the content should be available. Be sure to validate your pages!

Resources

Technology Access Program

The Technology Access Program (TAP) is the central campus resource for promoting the technology access needs of students, faculty, and staff with disabilities. The TAP website provides helpful information on accessibility policy, services, availability of adaptive hardware and software, and research.

For more information on how to make your website compliant with Section 508: http://tap.oregonstate.edu/section508.htm.

Section 508

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was enacted by the federal government to remove barriers in information technology and to encourage development of new technologies that will help achieve full accessibility. For comprehensive information about the history, goals, and implementation of the law, visit the Section 508 website.

Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C)

The W3C is considered the authoritative source for information on web technologies and a primary forum for information sharing. Their site includes a useful document on the development and design of accessible web pages: http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/.