With What Is Required + How to Fix Issues
Accessibility is everyone's responsibility!
We all share the responsibility of making Southern University’s digital spaces accessible to everyone. That includes our websites, documents, courses, videos, emails and social media. Whether you are creating content or sharing information, every step toward accessibility helps ensure all users can fully engage and succeed.
Use proper heading hierarchy to clearly organize content, similar to chapter titles in a book. Headings should follow a logical order, such as H1, H2, and H3. Follow best practices for headers: start each page with an H1 that describes the page's content, then use H2S and H3S as subheadings. Use the heading tags intentionally; do not randomly stagger them without regard for the structure. Keep dense paragraphs to a minimum, use shorter sentences when you can, and avoid using jargon or slang. Clearer, more concise copy will help users with cognitive impairments to better understand your content and will also help minimize confusion for all readers. https://accessibility.ots.la.gov/how-to-guides/page-structure/
Using all capital letters in text can make content harder to read for many users, including people with dyslexia, low vision, or cognitive disabilities. Excessive use of all caps can negatively impact readability and comprehension and should be avoided in favor of sentence or title case. Some assistive technologies may interpret long strings of capital letters as acronyms or emphasize them differently, which can affect how the content is understood.
Write descriptive link and button text that makes sense out of context and clearly describes where the link goes. Avoid using phrases like “click here.” The best link text gives users an idea of what to expect when they click. Descriptive link text is especially critical for your call-to-action copy. What better prepares the user about what they’ll encounter when they click: “Click here” or “Download our whitepaper”? https://accessibility.ots.la.gov/how-to-guides/links/
Add meaningful alternative text to images so users who rely on screen readers can understand the image's content and purpose. Alternative text, or “alt text,” describes your website’s images so a screen reader user can get a more comprehensive idea of each web page’s content. If you choose images that function as a visual explanation, people who cannot see them will be at a loss if you forgo alt text. https://accessibility.ots.la.gov/how-to-guides/images/
Use tables for data only, not to control layout or positioning. The Web Team is currently working to proactively convert many existing tables into fully compliant formats.
Use sufficient color contrast to ensure text and visual elements are easy to read. Recent website updates address color contrast at the template level, but custom content, images, and graphics should still be reviewed for accessibility. https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/#intro or https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/