SDGC
Web
Guidelines

Accessibility Guidelines for Web Pages

The School District of Greenville County has a responsibility to set a standard for compliance with federal and state accessibility initiatives. The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and other legislation direct us to accommodate people with visual, auditory, physical/motor, and cognitive/language disabilities.

When applied to the Web, accessibility includes consideration for people with physical and/or cognitive disabilities. While not all web pages can be made totally accessible, our goal is to make District web sites as accessible as possible by emphasizing content and providing information on web pages designed with accessibility in mind.

Examples of Disabilities to Be Considered

Visual Disabilities

• Blindness - no sight. May use voice-output software or refreshable Braille hardware.

• Low vision - some sight. May use screen-enlarging software.

• Color blindness. Need high contrast. Most typical forms of colorblindness are the inability to distinguish between red and green, or blue and green, or blue and yellow; some people see panchromatically (black and white only).

Auditory Disabilities

• Deafness - no hearing. Rely on text and graphics only.

• Hard of hearing - some hearing. May use sound-enhancing peripherals.

Physical/Motor Disabilities

• Difficulty with detailed manipulation of input devices such as a mouse.

• Problems holding down multiple keyboard keys simultaneously.

Cognitive/Language Disabilities

• Difficulty with spatial reasoning and/or visualization skills.

• Conditions that cause difficulty reading and/or understanding written text, such as dyslexia.

Web Page Design Criteria

• Maintain a simple, consistent page layout, including positioning of navigational aids throughout documents and document groups.

• Use standard, universally recognized HTML tags.

• Use large, commonly understood navigation scheme.

• Use meaningful terms for hyperlinks.

• Provide short, simple and meaningful alternative text for all graphical features.

• Keep backgrounds simple and of high contrast to allow easy viewing of content.

• Avoid low contrast color combinations or colors that may not be recognized by lower resolution screens.

• Do not use frames pages. If used, provide alternative page versions.

• Provide text-based delivery alternatives for as much information as possible. Do not rely solely on special formats (e.g., Adobe Acrobat) that cannot be read by text and voice systems.

• Provide transcripts, descriptions or subtitles for video and audio files to assist people with visual and hearing disabilities.

• Test pages on a variety of Web browsers (at least Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer) and at a variety of screen resolutions.

• Test pages on small screens to ensure the page does not bleed off the screen.

• Avoid parallel columns, as voice output systems read across the screen (i.e., jumps from column to column).

• Design the page so the user does not have to scroll from left to right to see the entire page.

For More Information