Web Accessibility

What is Web Accessibility?

There are many kinds of new technologies to help disabled people access information on the World Wide Web. Most of these revolve around visual disability issues. There are text browsers for visually impaired individuals which only display text in a high-contrast format, there are browsers that read the contents of a page aloud and there are even special screens that present webpage text as braille for blind users.

Individual disabilities are not the only thing that makes working with the Web difficult.

There is also a wide disparity in the kinds of network connections or computer hardware that people will use to view our site. On campus a user is connected to the web server with a fast computer at a very high speed, from ten to a hundred million bits per second. On the other end of the spectrum we have users who may be trying to view pages on our site with an old, slow computer connected to a phone line that is transmitting "only" thirty thousand bits per second. A page that loads in less than one second for the first user may take several minutes for the second user. 

As web authors, it is our responsibility to create pages in such a way as to convey information to anyone who needs it.

Is it the Law?

On June 21, 2004, the NYS Office for Technology issued Statewide Information Technology Policy P04-002, titled ACCESSIBILITY OF STATE AGENCY WEB-BASED INTRANET AND INTERNET INFORMATION AND APPLICATIONS. The policy requires all New York State agencies, including SUNY campuses, to provide universally accessible Web sites to enable persons with disabilities to access the sites. The policy affects all NYS Agency staff responsible for Web site and Web content development and any consultants or vendors who develop Web sites and content for a NYS agency Web site. Policy P04-002 is a follow-on to Statewide I.T. Policy 99-3 and 96-13.  It is also an extension of the Americans with Disabilities Act and applicable State Law, and therefore carries the same force as any state or federal regulation.  State policies refer back to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which outlines the requirements for accessible webpages in great detail.

What does Policy P04-002 mean for my website?

The Policy requires that any new webpages that are created or pages that are edited in any way after June 21, 2004 must be made compliant.

Pages that are identified as Home Pages, Critical Path Pages or High-Traffic Pages must be made compliant by December 21, 2004

Pages that are identified as Medium-Traffic Pages must be made compliant by March 21, 2005.

If making pages compliant constitutes an undue financial or administrative burden, compliancy can be waived under the terms of the Policy.

The College Web Coordinator will determine what pages fall under which traffic category and whether pages can receive a waiver under the undue burden clause.

How can I make a webpage compliant with this Policy?

Making webpages fully compliant with this policy is not a difficult task, but it does require some planning and consideration of the kinds of alternative technologies that people will be using to access our webpages.

There are three levels of compliance with WAI standards, Level A, AA and AAA.  Each subsequent level is more restrictive than the last, but it is expected that eventually all pages on the College website will meet AAA accessibility.  The rules governing these compliancy levels fall into two broad categories:

• Technical Standards - objective standards that are easy to meet and assess.
• Aesthetic Standards - subjective standards that are difficult to meet and assess.  This includes the appropriate organization of information within a page and across pages, the use of plain language, the use of appropriate navigation bars and the design of simple and clear pages to convey information.  Compliancy with these standards cannot be unambiguously assessed, and are therefore not the concern of the web coordinator.

Technical Standards - Level A

Technical Standards are those features of web sites that are easy to assess - either they are present or they aren't.  Level A compliancy requires twelve fundamental guidelines:

1. When using any pictures, include an Alternative Description Tag (Alt Tag) so that a user with a visual disability will know what is supposed to be visible in the relevant area of the screen.  This includes animated gifs, image-based bullets or graphical buttons.  The Alt Tag should describe what the image is, what function it performs or, in the case of a chart of graph, what information the item is meant to convey.
2. Avoid the use of colors that may create problems for individuals with color-blindness or for those using older monitors incapable of displaying more than 256 colors.  For example, a green text on a gray background may look like gray text on a gray background for some people. Generally, a dark text on a light background is best.  If color is used to convey information, an alternative means of conveying that information is required.
3. Each page must have the following line as its first line of html code:
   <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
4. If you use style sheets, make sure that the page can be viewed when style sheets are not applied or supported.
5. If you use any tools that provide dynamic content using scripts (see the scrolling news bar on the College Home Page for an example) you must provide an alternative version that is equivalent.
6. Do not allow the screen or screen elements to flicker on and off.
7. If you use an image map (see our Campus Map for an example) you must provide an alternative means for users to access the information.
8. If you use a table to actually organize data, you must identify row and column headers and for data tables with two or more logical levels of row or column headers you must use code to associate data cells and header cells.  See this page for an example of managing data tables.
9. Do not use frames in webpages.  They are not supported.
10. Make sure that a contact person is identified on each of your pages for users who cannot access the information on that page.
11. A page should take no longer than 20 seconds to load on a 28.8 kbps connection.  If pages take longer than 20 seconds, then content should be compressed or broken into multiple pages to speed the display.
12. If, despite your best efforts, you cannot make your pages compliant with these standards, you should provide a text summary of what the page contains along with a contact email and phone number that can provide a user with that page's information.

Technical Standards - Level AA

Level AA compliance is more stringent, with four additional standards:

1. Use the College's Style Sheet, Header and Footer (or modified versions of them) to control layout and presentation.
2. Do not use pages that auto-refresh, auto-redirect or links that open pages in new browser windows.
3. Provide a site map or table of contents for your site.
4. Use proper markup for headings, lists and quotations.

Technical Standards - Level AAA

Level AAA compliance is strictest of all, with five additional standards beyond Level A and AA standards.

1. If you use an acronym or an abbreviation, identify its meaning in its first usage.
2. If you have two links adjacent to each other, place a non-link, printable character between them.  For example, you can go to the Registrar site, the Student Accounts site, or the Financial Aid site.  In this case, the commas are not part of the links and therefore separate them conclusively.
3. Provide summaries for tables.
4. Do not place text in side-by-side columns, as in newspaper layouts.
5. When using forms, use a logical tab order, adjacent label layouts and default values for all form fields.

You should use one of the three icons shown below to show what level of compliance your pages meet:

  Level A Conformance
  Level AA Conformance
  Level AAA Conformance

You can use the following markup to display these icons:

What if I just can't seem to make my pages compliant?

If making your pages compliant constitutes an undue financial or administrative burden, there is a mechanism for exempting such pages from the policy.  Determination of this exemption is made by the web coordinator and requires a specific set of actions and documentation under the policy. 

Categories of reason for determination:

1. Content or service is provided by third party software applications whose replacement would be prohibitively difficult or expensive.
2. Making content or service compliant would require undue staff allocation or reassignment.
3. Making content or service compliant would result in a fundamental alteration of that content or service.
4. Content or service will be replaced before it could be made compliant.

Alternative methods for making content or service available to users:

1. Contact webpage author for assistance
2. Contact customer service representative for assistance
3. Contact Student Disability Services for assistance
4. Contact Web Coordinator for assistance

Assistance may constitute: filling out online forms or searching online databases, reading online content out loud, printing out content, modifying content for transmission via email, providing other alternatives for obtaining content or service uniquely suited to an individual.

Pages that are covered under this determination must have four meta-tags:

Keyword: “undue burden determination”
User variable: “noncompliancy date”, value string “mm/dd/yyyy”
User variable: “noncompliancy reason”, value string “#” (reason from above list)
User variable: “alternative provision”, value string “#” (alternative from above list)

This will allow tracking of pages by doing a search by keyword or user variable string.

Pages or folders covered under this determination will also receive the following text imprint:

“This page is not compliant with the NYS Mandatory Technology Standard S04-001, Accessibility of State Government Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications. Making this content compliant with the standard constitutes an undue administrative and / or financial burden. The content will be provided to users in alternative forms upon request by contacting the Office of Web Development. Call 607-436-3031 or email webmaster@oneonta.edu for assistance.”

A spreadsheet detailing the specific folders or pages that are covered under this determination is maintained at this link.
 

For more information about web accessibility rules and recommendations, you can view the Policy text at this link, or view the State Mandatory Technology Standard S04-002 that gives the technical standards in greater detail

You can also view the WAI Guidelines or a condensed WAI Checklist, and you can always contact Jennifer Knapp with questions about web accessibility.