Web Publishing Policy
W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1
Avoid the use of frames. They are very difficult to implement and require much more effort in coding to maintain useable and effective navigation for people using assistive technology.
If you feel you must use frames, all pages using frames must fully comply with the W3C WCAG 1.0 specification, to the level that the pages include no priority 1 or 2 errors. Additionally, you must not "trap" people in your frames, i.e., when a user clicks a link to a page outside of your site, you must not have the outside page load within your frame. The outside link must be loaded in the browser "full window" - "dropping" the frame. Do not use JavaScript or some other method to load the external link in a new browser window. Instead, outside links should be coded as follows:
<a HREF="http://www.state.tx.us" TARGET="_top"> State of Texas </a>
The Target="_top" attribute and value pair instructs the browser to load the link in the current browser window.
You may wish to indicate when a link leads to an external site to avoid complaints sent to your webdeveloper for errors on external sites you have linked.
Priority 1 checkpoints with some implementation information follow. For further information and techniques, and for priority 2 requirements, see the full guide at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ and the techniques guide at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/ . A convenient tabular summary of checkpoints is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html
Checkpoint 1.1
The HTML standards currently in use (3.2, 4.01) allow for the ALT attribute of non-text elements. The ALT attribute, often referred to incorrectly as ALT tags, is used to provide a text description of information bearing images. The description can be up to 1024 characters in length, but a maximum of 225 characters is recommended. The information provided by the ALT attribute is what is shown when you leave the mouse pointer over an image for a minimum amount of time, usually at least one second. In terms of accessibility, this text description serves as a replacement for the image for those using assistive technology such as screen readers, or for those people who use text only browsers or turn off automatic image loading.
All information-bearing images on UTD pages must include ALT information. This is especially important if you use images for your links. For non-informative images such as bullets or spacing images, use a blank space or use an empty alt (ALT=""). Avoid image maps if at all possible. If you feel that an image map is the only way to effectively convey the information they may be used. However, it must be implemented as a client-side map with an ALT description for each segment of the map. For more complex non-text elements (audio files, animations, applets, video), use the LONGDESC attribute or link to a text transcript or summary.
Example code:
<img src="library.gif" ALT="Photograph of the west side of the McDermott Library.">
Checkpoint 2.1
Don't rely on color alone to present information. Make sure that the same information is understandable without color. This can be done with markup or context. For example, on a form page don't say "required questions are in red." Indicate required items with an asterisk. View your pages with your monitor set to greyscale or print out the pages on a black and white printer (with "print background" selected).
Checkpoint 4.1
If your page includes information in more than one language, indicate where the change occurs and what the language change is. This is easily accomplished with the "lang" attribute.
Example code:
<P>Have you seen that Taco Bell commercial with the cihuahua that says <SPAN lang="es"> ¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!</SPAN>?</P>
Here, the default document language is English and the change to Spanish is indicated with a SPAN tag with the lang attribute set. Of course, the example above is HTML source. The end user would not see any difference, but a screen reader would recognize the change and read the spanish phrase correctly. The appropriate 2 character language codes are defined in the ISO-639 standard, available from the W3C at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm .
Checkpoint 6.1
If you use style sheets (or in-line styles), be sure that the information presented is available if the user cannot support style sheets. The Web Development Group recommends using only CSS v.1 features at the present time. CSS2 features like positioning, boxes and generated content are poorly (and inconsistently) supported by even the latest browsers. Use of CSS1 text formatting features is strongly recommended in place of the (deprecated) <FONT> tag.
Checkpoint 6.2
Whenever you change any dynamically generated content, whether it is generated from a client-side script, or simply relies on client-side scripting to access it, be sure to update the static equivalent. This includes things like text equivalents for applets, the text equivalent provided in the <NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT> section of your pages, and frameset documents. Information provided by sever side scripting (CGI, ASP, PHP) is not affected. For example, if you had a JavaScipt that generated a table displaying upcoming events for the week that automatically updated its information, remember to update the static equivalent table you are providing in the <NOSCRIPT> section when the week ends.
Checkpoint 7.2
Avoid causing the screen to flicker. Flickering, flashing, or blinking in the range of 4-59 times per second, as well as rapid changes from dark to light, can induce seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. Don't use the <BLINK> tag, and be sure that any animation you have changes frames (images) outside of the 4-59Hz range.
Checkpoint 14.1
Use the simplest and clearest language for your site's content. Remember your rules from composition class - use topic sentences and go directly to the main idea. You can check reading ease (after cutting and pasting your text in a new document) with utilities like the grammar checker in MS word. Word 2002 has this feature turned off by default. To turn it on, choose tools>spelling and grammar>options and check "show readability statistics". Try to keep the "Reading Ease" high (it is a scale of 0-100, 100 being easiest) and "Grade Level" around 9 for most general information pages.
Checkpoint 9.1
If you feel that you must use an image map, use a client-side map instead of a server-side map, unless the active regions of your map cannot be defined by a geometric shape. Client-side image maps define the active (clickable) regions of the image map within the HTML file
Checkpoint 1.2
Provide redundant text links for each active portion of a server-side image map. Give an indication of the existence of these links in the <IMG> tag for the map via the alt attribute. If you still cannot make the map accessible, provide an alternative page with the same links.
Checkpoint 5.1 & 5.2
If you use a table for data display rather than just page layout, label data row and column headers. If there are two or more logical levels, use markup -TH tags( table header), id, and headers attributes - to associate rows and columns. For a full explanation of the techniques involved, see
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#identifying-table-rows-columns
Checkpoint 12.1
Provide a title for each frame to assist in navigation. Do not use frames. If frames are used, title each frameset and frame element, and make sure the HTML page associated with each frame shares the same name and title. Example:
Frameset Document
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>frameset</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET ROWS="80,*" >
<FRAME NAME="title" SCROLLING="NO" noresize SRC="title.html" >
<FRAMESET COLS="80,*" >
<FRAME NAME="navigation" noresize SCROLLING="NO" SRC="navigation.html">
<FRAME NAME="body" SRC="intro.html">
</FRAMESET>
</FRAMESET>
<NOFRAMES>
intro | page2 | page3 |
</NOFRAMES>
</HTML>
Example Frame
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>intro</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000">
intro
</BODY>
</HTML>
Explore the full source code of each element of the example frames site .
Checkpoint 6.3
Your pages should provide the same information and navigation when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If you cannot provide the information, provide an accessible equivalent. Purely decorative effects like image rollovers or color changes are not much of an issue, but if the script does anything more substantial - submitting form information for example -make sure that you provide an alternative access method. When writing scripts you should avoid using event handler attributes (attributes beginning with "on" such as "onmouseover") that are device-dependent (are invoked by the mouse or keyboard only) and give preference to "onfocus" and its opposite "onblur" and "onselect." If you do use device-dependent attributes, combine them appropriately (i.e., "onmouseclick" with "onkeypress"). Don't use event handlers that rely on mouse coordinates.
Checkpoint 1.3 &1.4
Until browsers can automatically read aloud a text description of the visual part of multimedia elements, you will need to provide an auditory description of the important elements. You must also provide a visual representation of the audio portion. Both alternatives must be synchronized with the video, i.e., captions. Some multimedia formats support both (Quicktime), many do not. Current multimedia formats do not support alternative tracks, and therefore you will need to provide multiple versions of the file labeled appropriately.
Checkpoint 11.4
As a last resort, if you cannot create an accessible page, link to an alternative page that is accessible. This does not mean a text only page.
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