Every NC State website must be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. If you are an NC State faculty or staff member creating your own WordPress web pages, you are on the hook for ensuring the accessibility of your content. Issues with accessibility can involve subtle to complete visual or hearing impairments, various levels of physical disability affecting one’s ability to use a mouse or keyboard, and so forth.
To help keep it simple, here’s a Top 5 list of recommendations for ensuring your content is highly accessible:
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Rennie’s Top 5
Accessibility Tips for Your Web Content
1. Is everything Legible?
- No italics—Use bold for emphasis. Not italics.
- Font size—Never smaller than 9 points. Not 8 points.
- Color choices:
- Contrast: Black text on a white background is the most legible color contrast.
- Color for emphasis: To emphasis one word or phrase, do not use color alone. Use bold also.
- Branding: NC State specifies branding-compliant colors and fonts and so forth. To make sure your web content is NC State brand-compliant, see the NC State Brand website.
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2. Does Every Image Have Alt-Text?
- If you use an image to convey information of any kind, edit the image and enter descriptive text in the Alternative Text field.
- For example, if you mouse over the blue woman holding the sign, you will see (or hear) the words, “Tip icon.” That is the alt-text for the image, which communicates with screen-reader technology to convey said helpful information to your visually impaired audience.
- Another example could be “Photo of Renfrew Bidgood.”
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3. Does Every VIDEO Have Captioning?
- For each video you include in a web page, make sure it has captioning so that every spoken word is represented visually for your hearing-impaired audience.
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4. Does Every Hyperlink Have Descriptive text?
- For each hyperlink, make sure the displayed text is descriptive. For example:
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5. Did You Cheat with the Headings?
- Almost everyone does, by the way.
- If you use the headings out of order (typically to select the formatting you prefer), you will wreak havoc for all accessibility technology.
- Don’t cheat. Instead, use the headings as they are intended:
- Heading1—Use this only for the title of each web page.
- Heading2—Use this only to begin a new sublevel under the H1 level.
- Heading3—Use this only to begin a new sublevel under the H2 level.
- …and so forth.
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