Web Accessibility Home Page

Why create accessible web pages?

• Because it's the right thing to do.

• Because it's the law, Section 508, Section 504, ADA, ...

• So all our students, parents, prospective students, faculty, staff, and administration can access all of our web pages.

Accessibility Guidelines

Web Guidelines

Visit our Web Accessibility Guidelines

Web Accessibility Checklist

Check our our Web Accessibility Checklist

Warning! "The following links will take you to sites outside the Cuesta College web server. Cuesta College has no control over the content or availability of these sites."

www.w3c.org

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines.

Section 508 Standards

Information about the Section 508 law, which covers accessibility of electronic information.

Usability.gov

A good resource for designing usable, useful, and accessible web sites. Includes several links to accessibility guidelines.

Section 508 vs. WCAG Priority 1 Guidelines

A side-by-side comparison of the Section 508 Web Standards and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Priority 1 Checkpoints.

Web Colors

Use care to make sure there is good contrast between backgrounds and text. For example, tan text on a light brown or orange background is hard to read because of a lack of contrast. Light text against a dark background has good contrast, but it is sometimes necessary to increase the font size to make the text easy to read. The dark background can bleed onto the letters, making them difficult to read. Consider using CSS for assigning font sizes, this way it is possible to make changes to all the print in your web site by modifying just one file!

Consider having a background color, such as a light eggshell or very light gray tone, or a background image, such as the one shown on this web page. Many people find it easier to read web pages when the background isn't quite such a bright white.

A  RGB Hex Triplet Color Chart is useful for determining the numbers for various colors.

Please Don't Blink!

Avoid using the <blink> tag, or any other feature which causes the screen to flash between 2 and 55 times per second. Avoid the use of scrolling text, or marquees, since this may be difficult for many people to read. Use caution with animated gif files as they may cause the screen to flicker, and they can also distract people. If you use animated gifs, consider limiting the number of times the animation takes place.

Get the Cuesta College "Look"

Would you like your web pages to have the look and feel of the Cuesta College home page? It is fairly simple to set up your documents to use the Cuesta College banner and CSS.

JavaScript

If you choose to use JavaScript on your web pages, it is necessary to add the noscript tag. This tag should include the information, or links, which were provided by the JavaScript. Please contact the Alternate Media Facilitator for assistance with noscript tags, (805) 546-3100 x2825.

Evaluation and Repair Tools

• A-Prompt. This shareware program can be used to analyze and repair your web pages. Always make a backup copy of your web page before running this tool, since it sometimes makes undesirable changes.

• Bobby. There are both online and freeware versions of the Bobby accessibility tester. The freeware program can be used to analyze a web page on your local computer before it is posted to the internet. The reports can be a little difficult to understand.

• ACC-Verify. We only have a few licenses for ACC-Verify. It is installed on the Alternate Media Facilitator's computer, and on the Instructor's station computer in the SLO ELIC.

• InFocus. This is a very good commercial accessibility testing and repair tool, but Cuesta College has not purchased any licenses.

Web Accessibility Support and Training

Contact the Alternate Media Facilitator at 546-3100 x2825.

Online Training

• "Web Accessibility for Section 508" This website has excellent training on web site accessibility.

Training Manuals:

Warning! "The following links will take you to sites outside the Cuesta College web server. Cuesta College has no control over the content or availability of these sites."

• The " Dive into Accessibility Book" does a great job describing 5 people with different disabilities, and how to make web pages accessible for each of them.

• EASI, or Equal Access to Software and Information, provides information on how to create accessible web pages.

• The High Tech Center Training Unit (HTCTU) publishes documents on web site accessibility.

• There is a FrontPage 2002 Tutorial available on the Microsoft Web site.

• If you include PDF files on your web pages, you should create accessible PDF files by following the directions on Adobe's web site.

• If you use PowerPoint presentations, there is an accessibility plug-in to make them accessible. The tool creates accessible HTML code for you, and prompts you for alt tags and other accessibility information. 

• Web Design Group produced several web pages on cascading style sheets and how to include them in your web pages, see 

• The "Simplified Web Accessibility Guide" is a PDF document with great, easy to read, information on web accessibility. 

• The Webaim tutorial covers how to make accessible web content using FrontPage 2000.

More Useful Links

Usability.gov

An extensive listing of web accessibility resources.

W3Schools

Inside W3Schools you will find a large number of free Web building tutorials, from basic HTML and XHTML tutorials, to advanced XML, XSL and WAP tutorials. W3Schools has thousands of cut-and-paste examples. With the on-line HTML editor you can edit the examples and experiment with the code on-line, and then cut the code and paste it into your own web pages.

JimThatcher.com

Discusses Section 508, includes a free web accessibility course, and provides a tutorial for creating accessible web pages.

Webaim

A useful website with many web related topics, including one that demonstrates how inaccessible web-based forms can be and the different workarounds that can be incorporated into the HTML coding. The site also contains an example of how a screen-reader will render an on-line form audibly. Includes a tutorial on how to make accessible web content using FrontPage 2000. 

Return to Top

Page maintained by dspsweb@cuesta.edu. Last modified: 03/03/2004.