Web Site Resources
St.
Lawrence University Web Page Accessibility
Guidelines
By Mark Mende, Coordinator
of Electronic Communications
January 16, 2002
Introduction
Over the course
of the last few years, the World Wide Web has gone
from a place where colleges and universities presented
basic information about themselves to a variety of
audiences to a place where these institutions communicate
back and forth with these audiences, as well as conduct
transactions of sometimes crucial information. Some
schools have even gone so far as to offer certain
forms of communication and information solely in
an on-line setting.
At the same time,
the design of web pages has become increasingly more
elaborate both stylistically and technologically,
with the expanded use of graphics to not only enhance
pages but also serve as navigational features, as
well as the further use of audio, video and other
higher-end technologies.
These phenomena
can often be at odds with each other, and they can
be especially problematic for people with certain
disabilities, especially those with visual disabilities.
The technology used by people with visual disabilities,
most commonly known as a screen reader, interprets
a web page based on the information that lies within
the html, which is the programming language web pages
are most often produced with. Screen readers read
left to right across the screen, from top to bottom,
and they can have difficulty interpreting graphical
elements and most multi-media components of modern
web pages, unless they are properly programmed
It is the determination
of the St. Lawrence University Web Committee that,
because of the university's desire to be all-inclusive,
and to provide the best possible on-line experience
for all users, producing and maintaining a web site
that is accessible for everyone should be a goal.
Designing
Accessible Web Sites
The guidelines
that will be are those developed by the World Wide
Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative. Those
guidelines can be found at www.w3.org/WAI/.
There are two main areas that people can address
to make their pages accessible:
1. When using
graphics for navigational features (such as buttons),
provide text-only alternatives for the links, usually
at the bottom of the page.
2. Use alt tags on all graphics. If the graphic is
a navigational feature, describe it in the alt tag
as such and say where the button leads. If the graphic
serves to enhance the page visually, describe the
image in the alt tag. If the graphic serves neither
of these purposes, leave a blank alt tag. Alt tags
can be inserted manually in the source code of your
pages. Also, programs such as Dreamweaver and Composer
allow you to enter an alt tag through a menu related
to the placement of the graphic. Here is an example
of how an alt tag looks in the source code of a web
page:
<img name="prospect_box" src="images/prospect_box.gif" width="96" height="43" border="0" alt="links
for prospective students">
