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Bookmark and ShareGeneral Accessibility Guidance

St. Ambrose University has a commitment to keeping its website accessible to all, including the blind or otherwise physically impaired. Beyond this commitment, the federal government requires that institutions and organizations that accept grant money maintain accessible websites.

The website design contains features and formatting geared toward accessibility and the use of coding practices that allow a variety of web devices to read and understand the content on our pages. Content contributors should not have to worry too much about accessibility, as the page templates within the CMS are designed to automatically format added content in ways that remain accessible.

Some notes follow regarding areas of special importance.

 

Recommended Guidelines

All pages on St. Ambrose University's website should meet Priority 1 accessibility recommendations as dictated by the WC3. Priority 2 and 3 are highly recommended.

Read the complete checklist of priorities.

 

Key Content Contributor Considerations

Some areas that content contributors must pay attention to:

  • All images must have "alt" (alternate) tags. In most cases, the alt tag is an editable field within the CMS. Alt tag content should describe the information and/or meaning of an image or graphic so that those using text-only browsers or other assistive devices can interpret.
  • Tables should not be used for formatting the visual display of information other than true tabular data such as a chart with program admission deadlines. To be considered accessible, headers of columns and rows must be labeled with a table header tag (). This allows text-only browsers and other assistive devices to make sense of the organization of the information.
  • Choose the "Paste Text Only" paste option when copy and pasting content directly from Microsoft Word, your email program or other formatted text into the CMS. This will remove formatting instructions from the text. Then use the text editor in the CMS to format headlines, italicized words, bolded words, bulleted and numbered lists, etc.
  • Do not add your own color or size formatting when adding content into the site via the CMS. If your content requires special formatting, contact Communications & Marketing for assistance.

 

XHTML - Validation

St. Ambrose University's website is written in XHTML 1.0. The templates within the CMS validate against both HTML and CSS Web standards, with a few minor exceptions.

Content contributors should be able to use the WYSIWYG editor to do the majority of their formatting. The WYSIWYG editor will help generate valid code.

If editing of the HTML is necessary, ensure that all tags are closed appropriately.

Examples:

This is a paragraph. It must open with tag and close with a tag.


If you want to force a line break,

you can add a tag where you want to break

but make sure you use an ending tag!



Resources

Basic HTML and CSS

Web Accessibility