Website Publishing Guide

Accessibility Basics

The accessibility of each Website is subject to the review of the college Web Team.

PAGE CONTENT STRUCTURE—Headings, lists, and other structural elements give meaning and structure to web pages. Is your page structure consistent with your department site overall structure? Are you using subheadings to allow the user to scan the page for the information they need?
LINKS—Is your link phrasing informative? Does it match the page information being referenced from the link?
Example: DO NOT USE Click here to access department phone numbers. INSTEAD USE View department phone numbers.
IMAGES—Do all images and graphics have alternative text descriptions (ALT text)?
LISTS—Are you using lists to make information more readable and clear? Are your lists justified left? Is the puntuation consistent for all list items?
TABLES—Do all tables have headers and proper reading order? If you created a new table, did you select it from Snippets for consistent Foothill website formatting?
COLOR—Ave you avoided using color to convey meaning? Is sufficient color contrast used?
DOCUMENTS—Are all Word, PDF, and PowerPoint documents accessible? Are they properly formatted with heading levels for organization and structure?
VIDEO—Does all audio have transcripts available? Do all videos have closed captioning?
THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE—Are applications and publisher’s materials accessible?
Are all math symbols and science equations accessible?
Are all external websites that are referenced accessible?

An important step in creating accessible pages is to validate your HTML. The WAVE Accessibility Tool analyzes Web pages for accessibility.
Make sure the HTML titles of your pages are unique. Titles are an important navigational tool for users. Document titles are more important than people realize. Browsers bookmark titles and search engines often look for and index titles.
When possible, use only technologies defined in a W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specification and use them in an accessible manner. When this is not possible, provide an alternative page that is accessible and based on standards.

All images and image map coordinates should have an ALT attribute that specifies alternative text that will be shown if image display is not possible or disabled by the user. This gives the user some indication of what's missing.
ALT attributes should be properly punctuated to allow various screen readers (software for the visually impaired) to work more effectively.
Judiciously use the appropriate amount of text in ALT attributes. ALT attributes should sufficiently describe the image in as concise a manner as possible. If your image includes text, the ALT attribute should reflect that text. EXAMPLE: ALT attributes such as "image" or "photo" are uninformative. Make your ALT text specific and meaningful. Using transparent GIF spacers is fine, but they need to have ALT text. For non-essential images, you can use a blank ALT attribute; for example, ALT="" is acceptable for spacer GIFs or other non-critical or content-devoid images.

If you use a colored background, make sure there is high contrast between the background and text. Avoid backgrounds with busy patterns, since these can make text difficult to read.

When using tables to represent data, rows and columns should be clearly labeled and the summary attribute should be used in the table tag. This does not apply to tables used for layout.