Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

11 – Accessibility and Universal Design
Category
Description
Vision (V)
Hearing (H)
Motor (M)
Cognitive (C )
Text & links Fonts use a relative font size (em, %), not absolute (px, pt) V,M,C
Heading tags (H1, H2) used correctly as headers, not to
format font
Ability to skip navigation
Links separated by more than just whitespace
Colour not used to convey information, or reinforced by other
visual cues
Underline not used on non-linked text
Link text does not repeat on the same page (e.g., “click
here”) but is unique to each link.
TITLE attribute added to ambiguous links.
Lists use the UL/OL and LI tags, not bullet images
Coding should not prevent user from changing colours with
own stylesheets
V,M,C
V
V
V
C
V
V
V,C
V,C
Notes
Rating
(1–5)*
Tables Tables used for data, not for layout V
Table row or column headers indicated using the TH tag. V,C
Table summary provided
V,C
Forms
Forms can be navigated in the correct order using the TAB
key
Each form field has an associated LABEL tag
Enough time given to fill out forms
Required fields noted as such before the form label, and
marked with asterisk or bold
V,M
V
V,M,C
V
Multimedia Transcripts available for all audio H
Transcripts or captioning available for all video
Content presented in Flash described in an alternative format
as well
Avoid distracting animations, scrolling text
Links provided to download any necessary plug-ins
PDFs accessible or plain text made available
Content in applets and plug-ins accessible or else not required
If alert sounds are used, reinforce the sound using visual
notification
V,H
V,H,C
V,C
V,H,M,C
V
V,M,C
H
Education for a Digital World 171