Accessibility for Content Creators

Digital content must be accessible to people with disabilities including those who use assistive devices or software. Accessibility guidelines apply to:

• Webpages
• Course content
• Social media posts
• PowerPoint presentations
• PDFs
• Video and audio
• Emails

Language

Use language that’s appropriate for your audience. Only use technical terminology or jargon if you’re confident your readers will be familiar with it. Check out the Federal Plain Language Guidelines to learn more.

Headings

Headings in a document or webpage should follow a hierarchical order, beginning with a single level one heading (H1). Don’t skip levels. Check out WebAIM: Headings to learn more.

Use programmatic headings instead of bold text or a larger font size.

Use headings to convey the subjects of section of content, and use them hierarchically. Each page should have a single level one heading, which should be followed by one or more level two headings (H2), and so on. Do not skip heading levels.

Don’t use a heading simply because of the visual styling it may provide. Email University Web Services if you would like assistance with styling text or headings.

Writing Link Text

Use concise, descriptive link text. Avoid using link text that is vague, especially “click here.” Assistive technology users may navigate a webpage by following links that are taken out of context.

Take this sentence, for example:

“UT Dallas is awesome because of our great faculty, who you can read more about here.”

“Here” taken out of context is meaningless. A better way to link this would be to rephrase the sentence and link the text “great faculty” — “UT Dallas is awesome because of our great faculty.”

Don’t repeat link text for different destinations. This commonly occurs on pages such as news listings where multiple items are listed and each is followed by a link with the text “read more.”

Taken out of context those “read more” links can’t be differentiated from one another. A better approach would be to link the headlines of the articles and omit “read more.”

Always provide alt text for images that are links. If an image serves as a link, it must have alt text that conveys the destination or purpose of the link. Don’t write this as a URL but as a phrase that would make sense to a human.

For example, an icon of a stack of books that is a link to the McDermott Library site, should have alt text that says, “McDermott Library.”

Text Alternatives for Images

Do provide alternative (“alt”) text for informational images, especially for images that contain text, charts or graphs. Alt text should be used in the alt attribute inside an img element.

Don’t provide alt text for images that are strictly decorative. If an image isn’t providing essential content, it doesn’t need alt text.

Don’t provide alt text that is repetitive. If an image is described in text (for example, if a graph is discussed in detail in the text of a page, or if a visible caption is used), duplicating that information in the alt would be redundant.

Always provide alt text for images that are links. If an image serves as a link, it must have alt text that conveys the destination or purpose of the link. Don’t write this as a URL but as a phrase that would make sense to a human. For example, an icon of a stack of books that is a link to the McDermott Library site, should have alt text that says, “McDermott Library.”

Text Alternatives for Audio and Video

Provide text alternatives for audio, video, images and charts that convey meaning.

A text alternative must be provided for all audio, whether it is in an audio-only format (like a podcast) or part of a video. The text alternative can be captions or a transcript.

• Captions (as defined by W3C Web Accessibility Initiative) are a text version of the speech and nonspeech audio information needed to understand the content. They are displayed within the media player and are synchronized with the audio. Most are closed captions that can be hidden or shown by people watching the video. They can be open captions that are always displayed and cannot be turned off.

Do provide captions or transcription of all videos and audio, including live video.

• Microsoft Teams provides an option for live captions, but it won’t be 100% accurate. If the meeting is recorded, closed captions will need to be added afterward before the recording is shared. This won’t describe visuals that are on screen, so consider having the speaker describe visuals during a meeting.
• There are also paid services that can provide live captioning.

Always identify who is speaking.

Describe visuals and actions seen in a video. If a video includes visuals, such as charts or graphs, these should be described in an accessible text format. Include description of visuals, actions that happen in the video and audio cues such as music or sound effects.

Auto-generated captions (such as what is provided by YouTube) can be a good starting place but are not sufficient. Autogenerated captions should be carefully proofread and edited for accuracy and punctuation. Speaker identification should be added.

Note: The captioning/transcription requirement applies to third-party content. If you embed on your website a video or audio produced by another organization, you are still responsible for ensuring that a text alternative is available.

Learn more about subtitles and captions:

• Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions from WebAIM
• Add Your Own Subtitles & Closed Captions (YouTube)
• Use Automatic Captioning (YouTube)
• Edit cCaptions (YouTube)

Text Formatting

Use left-aligned text and avoid setting text to “justified.” Justified text may be more difficult to read for people with dyslexia or some eye conditions.

Don’t use all caps. Assistive technology interprets and announces capital letters and all-capitalized words differently than lowercase and camel case words. All caps may be read as acronyms. For example, “ABOUT US” might be interpreted as “About U.S.” instead of “About us.”

Reserve use of tables for tabular data, not for content layout. Check out WebAIM: Creating Accessible Tables.