Campus Web Pages

CSUN  Internet and intranet sites contain some barriers to access for people with disabilities. The most commonly encountered barrier is the failure to provide appropriate and meaningful text information for visual images ("alt text" for simple images and icons and long descriptions for more complicated graphics). This barrier, like others that are encountered less frequently, can be eliminated quite easily with minimal design changes.

Campus web pages can be made relatively easy for people with disabilities to use by avoiding the "bells and whistles" that require more particular attention to accessibility issues, such as multimedia content or interactive features.  As much as possible, campus web pages should embrace new technology, not for technologies sake, but in order to better deliver information services to the campus community.  Web pages can reflect the varied technologies available to the Internet, but at the same time, allow persons with disabilities to enjoy those pages without compromise.  This is the challenge that is presented to IT professionals and administrators.

As campus wide units and agencies put more of their programs and services online, they must remain vigilant to ensure they are not inadvertently creating barriers for people with disabilities. Online forms and documents rendered exclusively in Adobe's portable document format (pdf) or Microsoft's PowerPoint format may raise particular concerns.

As most barriers on campus web sites result from an inattention to detail rather than an underlying difficulty with the design or technology, webmasters should invite people with disabilities to inform them when they encounter barriers.

To address these issues and others detailed in this report, the 508 Compliance committee recommends the following:
 

1. Testing Web Pages Before Posting. Each unit should evaluate for accessibility all of its new web pages before they are posted. Existing web pages should be tested as they are updated. Testing should be done with text-only browsers and, where possible, with assistive technology such as screen reading software to ensure that the experience of users with disabilities is comparable to that of others.
2. Web Guidelines. Each campus body  that has developed style guidelines to maintain a consistent "look and feel" of its Web pages should review those guidelines to ensure that they will maximize the accessibility of those web pages.
3. Dedicated E-mail Addresses. Because most accessibility problems on campus web sites result from oversight or lack of awareness of accessibility issues, rather than technical or design difficulty, each unit should prominently post to its Internet pages an e-mail address through which users with disabilities can inform the unit of any accessibility barriers encountered. Each unit should be responsive to any e-mails it receives regarding the accessibility of its web site to people with disabilities.
4. Location of Accessibility Information. Where it makes sense to do so, such as when placing a link to a text-only alternate web site or when posting the accessibility instruction and label, each unit should place accessibility information in the uppermost left-hand corner of its Web pages. This location will facilitate use of the unit's web pages by people who use screen readers, as it is the first location from which a screen reader will read.
5. Document Formats. As units put more of their programs and services online, each must remain vigilant to ensure it is not inadvertently creating barriers for people with disabilities. Online forms created using any of the various Web technologies pose significant accessibility challenges to web designers.  If any posted documents or forms are less than fully accessible, each unit should also post ASCII or accessible HTML versions of the same documents, where possible. Where exclusive reliance on an inaccessible format is unavoidable, each unit should provide contact information where users with disabilities can request the underlying information in an accessible format, where doing so would not impose an undue burden on the creator or result in an fundamental alteration.