Making your web pages more accessible

Users with disabilities access the web in a variety of ways. Many use assistive technology such as screen readers or eye tracking software which present information on web pages differently to the way a browser does.

These tips can help you make the content of your web pages easier to access for people with a range of disabilities, and will also improve your content for all users.

The four principles of accessibility

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an international organisation promoting web accessibility and its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) are widely considered an international standard. They are based around four guiding principles. Web content must be:

  • Perceivable - Users must be able to recognise that content is there, using either their senses or accessibility aids such as screen readers.
  • Operable - Users must be able to make the interface work, for example, to use the navigation bar or stop and start controls for a video.
  • Understandable – The people you are writing for must be able to understand your content.
  • Robust - Content should work on a web browser and also with other technologies, such as a phone or a screen reader.

These POUR principles can be translated into tasks which are straightforward for you and really help your users.

One simple first step is, where possible, to use the Web CMS or the University’s Dreamweaver template to create web pages, as the template and colourschemes have already been tested for accessibility. This will give you a framework, and you will then be able to focus on making your content accessible.

Structure your content

Ensure that each piece of text in a web page is styled according to its meaning, eg as a heading, table or paragraph. It helps readers quickly grasp what is in the document.

Write for the web

  • Write at an appropriate level for your audience and always use plain English for a general audience

For more advice and information, please see the ‘Writing for the web’ training course

Use images wisely

  • Describe the content of images, unless they are purely decorative, in which case use a null (empty) alt tag (alt=””).
  • Optimise graphics to get the best display at the lowest file size.
  • Use text to display words, rather than an image.

See more advice about choosing and using images.

Enhance multimedia

Providing content in Flash, video or audio format alone may make content inaccessible for some users.

  • Present video using the University’s streaming service – it is set up with accessible controls and will allow you to add captions
  • Consider whether to make content available as a text transcript, describing action as well as dialogue if relevant.
  • If Flash files provide meaningful content (such as teaching material) then this needs to be made available in another way.

See more advice about using multimedia.

Think about linked documents

Check that your linked documents are accessible, too.

PDF files

  • Check that documents are correctly structured before creating a PDF, so users can distinguish headings, tables and body text. If not, add them to the document structure.
  • When scanning documents to produce images of a page, use the conversion software's OCR Text Recognition feature to produce text from the image and embed that in the PDF file.
  • Add accessibility features for forms and buttons.

IT Services provides guidance on producing accessible pdf files with supported software. The Adobe website contains more information on creating accessible pdfs with Acrobat Pro.

PowerPoint (and other presentation software)

Screen readers can have problems reading out slides: use the built-in templates and properly format the content with headings, text and lists.

Consider user testing

The Web Office can check that your site is working for its users by running user testing on your behalf. Please contact us to find out more.

Who to contact