Web accessibility best practices

General good practices for ensuring web accessible content

General good practices include:

• Specifying the title and language of the document
• Using proper headings, structure or tags (terminology varies by software), and not using formatting (e.g. font size and color) to convey document organization and structure
• Including alternate text for embedded images
  • WebAIM article on alternative text
  • Complex image description guidelines including for scientific images
  • All alt-text should end with a "." so a screenreader will pause after reading.
• Using text for textual content, not images of text
• Creating properly formatted lists and tables (e.g. using Word's tools to create lists and tables, rather than using tabs and spaces to position content)
• Selecting color combinations with sufficient contrast
• Not using color to convey meaning.

Providing a web accessible template for the use of your authors is a good to get a head start on accessible submissions. Consider also creating and using web accessible templates in your production process.

See PKP's General principles for creating accessible content for more in-depth information.

Microsoft Word documents

If MS-Word is your starting point, make sure the end result is accessible by using Word's built-in Check Accessibility tool, available on the Review tab.

For more information on creating accessible Word documents, please see:

• WebAIM's article, Microsoft Word: Creating Accessible Documents, including information on preserving accessibility features when converting Word documents to PDF or HTML.
• Creating accessible Word documents from the DAISY consortium goes into a little more detail and has good guidance of formatting tables.
• MS Office's article, Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities.
• MS Office's article, Improve accessibility with the Accessibility Checker.
• Accessible templates for MS Office

PDF and InDesign documents

Resources:

• WebAIM provides a very good overview of PDF Accessibility.
• WebAIM also has specific instructions for preserving accessibility features when converting Word documents to PDF. 
• The National Center on Disability and Access to Education also provides "cheat sheets" for different versions of Adobe Acrobat and InDesign (older versions).
• Adobe workflow for creating accessible PDFs from InDesign.
• Additional resources are available from IT@Cornell.

If you have access to it, use Adobe Acrobat Pro to run a Full Accessibility check on PDFs. Make sure it passes without errors. Some items require human inspection, in addition to using Acrobat's checker.

If you do not have access to Acrobat Pro, a free option for checking accessibility is PAVE - Validate and Fix PDF Accessibility (maximum file size: 5MB).

HTML documents

• Follow general best practices, above.
• Use a dedicated HTML template for your journal (we can work with you to create one).
• Check HTML documents using SiteImprove's browser extension (Chrome works best).

Contact us

If you have questions: cul-publishing@cornell.edu