Web Accessibility Overview
Purdue University Policy
Purdue's official policy for electronic information, communication and technology states that all websites, documents, and electronic media must meet the standards and guidelines outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at Level AA. This requirement went into effect January 18, 2018.
Importance
To design for accessibility means to be inclusive to the needs of your users. This includes your main users, users outside of your target demographic, users with disabilities, and even users from different cultures and countries.
Benefits
Any accessibility improvement benefits all website users, not only those with impairments. For example:
- Structuring content using clearly-marked headings.
- Organizing data in tables using captions and column/row headers.
- Large, clickable elements benefit users on all devices.
- Increasing contrast between text and background colors will improve readability.
- Using text instead of images of text will decrease page load times.
- Utilizing captions and transcripts makes audio and video content useful in noisy environments, for people with learning disabilities, and for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
The covered topics are:
- Text
- Controls: links, buttons and forms
- Color
- Images
- Documents:
- Video & audio