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Overall Design
Step 3: Creating Accessible Content
Whatever software you decide to use will offer some degree of help in creating accessible web pages. Problems may arise when you want to add content to your pages and are unsure how to do this while remaining within the required guidelines. Many programs such as Acrobat Professional (used for creating and editing PDF files) will have accessibility options. Look for accessibility help within whatever program you are using. Often help is hiding in one of the menus. If you cannot find accessibility help within the program, use a search engine to find help on the internet by typing the appropriate key words into the search box: help accessibility (and the name of the content you want to include, i.e., mov files, pdf, photo gallery, java scripts). Ask at your school if there is one-on-one help and advice available for problems with content that you want to include on your webpage.
Images, Maps, and Graphics
Each image, map, or graphic must have alternate text to accompany the image. This can be anything from a few words for a simple image to a long description for a more complicated map or graphic. Check your web designing program for “Alt tags”, “Long Descriptions”, and “image captions”. You can also add alternate text to an image in Microsoft Word by accessing the image/picture properties dialog box. The alternate text will appear when the image receives focus (or by hovering your mouse pointer over an image) on your web page.
Video and Audio Captioning
If your website contains video clips or a live video feed you will need captioning to accompany the video. Captioning is the synchronized text display of information that is presented on the screen in an audio format. The captions appear as a written representation of onscreen audio including non-spoken audio sound effects such as music and laughter. In the case of live video feeds, captioning takes place in real-time and streams across the viewers screen. Create a plain text transcript as an alternate means of providing a vision impaired student with the information contained in a video file.
Files
Information on your website should be supplied in a format that is accessible. Whenever possibly, make files available in several formats. Some of the most common formats include:
- HTML: (HyperText Markup Language) This is probably the format of choice when accessibility is the goal. HTML is a highly structured language which supports accessibility issues. When used properly it supports text to speech software and is widely accepted. Included in this category would also be XML (Extensible Markup Language) and XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) a hybrid between XML and HTML.
- Word: Microsoft Word is one of the most popular word processing applications. A plain text document that does not include images, tables, headings or subheadings will be equally accessible in HTML and Word. Problems arise in the more complicated documents.
- PDF: There are three types of PDF files: The first is Structured which includes embedded fonts. The second type is Unstructured which is much like an image. The third is referred to as Tagged and is the only PDF format that is accessible. A Tagged PDF has an HTML like structure and support alternate text. Tagged PDFs can be easily created from Word documents.
- Microsoft PowerPoint: These files are reasonably accessible when they are viewed within the PowerPoint application itself. Accessibility problems can arise when the files are exported to the web. To view a PowerPoint file the user must have the application to view it. If they do not, it must be viewed using a PowerPoint
plug-in through their web browser. Viewing the file in this way does not render it usable by a screen reader.
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