Southern Arkansas University serves a diverse audience of constituents. As such, it is imperative that University’s website is accessible and usable by all users, including those with disabilities. Following the Web Accessibility Content Guidlines (2.0), the University stives to adhere to indentified best practices in the creation and delivery of electronic content. Web content editors are required to follow WCAG 2.0 guideliness when creating and publishing to the SAU website. Below you will find a selection of the most commonly applied guidelines along with other resources to help ensure SAU’s web content is accessible. Any questions or concerns may be directed to Josh Jenkins, Manager of Web Communications.
Best Practices
- All visual content must also have a text equivalent. For example, buttons and forms must included appropriate labels and images must include alt tags or captions.
- Links must be descriptive to assist users in understanding content on the other side of the link. Links to Word documents [.doc], PDF files [.pdf], Excel spreadsheets [.xls], Zip files [.zip], etc., should be clearly labeled as such to indicate to the user that a download or non-html file load will take place.
- Content should be structured using heading tags (in a sequential manner) as well as using ordered and unorder lists.
- Appropriate color contrast must be used to clearly distinguish text and other content form the background. Using the approved colors, fonts, and integrating styling as part of the main SAU theme will assist with this process.
Accessibility Tools
Auditing website accessibility can be technical and tedious. To assist with this process, web content editors are encouraged to regularly scan their sites using a tool such as WAVE or Tota11y. Both tools analyze the HTML of a URL using WCAG 2.0 standards, highlight errors and other points of concern.
- To assist content managers in reviewing their content, the Web office has created a Web Content and Style Review checklist.
