University Webmaster

Back to Web Publishing Policy

Appendix IV.

Information Technology ADA Compliant Guidelines for Websites

The Internet is one of the most expansive resources of information available today. This means that it is used by virtually everyone in the world and not everyone visits pages the same way. Those with various disabilities visit many pages, especially those in the area of education. Due to this fact, member of the University Community are urged to begin making their websites ADA compliant.

According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) begun by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) there are three levels of conformance in becoming ADA compliant. At the University we would like to begin to move toward a Priority 1 or Conformance Level “A” status for our main web pages.

ADA Guidelines
These are strongly recommended steps in making your website ADA compliant.

In order to increase accessibility to use our site and its resources that it provides, the following guidelines are provided to assist in making many of the Georgia Southern University websites ADA Compliant.

1. Provide Alternate Text For Images.

  1. If an image has text on it that a user must see in order to communicate a message then what happens if that image cannot be seen? If a user of the site is visually disabled in some fashion and can not clearly see that image then there must be some way for them to get that message.
  2. Alternative Text is easily accomplished by adding the “ALT” attribute to an image.

2. Do not use complex tables for layout of a page

  1. Tables are one of the main ways to layout websites. The problem is if you read a table the way that it is written in the code and it is really complex, then you create a complex message to send someone. Use Tables reasonably.

3. Do not rely on color to express necessary information.

  1. If all colors are removed from the website. Is it still usable? If not then that is an issue for someone who is visually impaired.
  2. Use color still, but be careful of what it is used for

4. If possible attempt to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

  1. Cascading style sheets allow the user to change your page to their fonts if necessary. When the font sizes are hard coded into a HTML document it makes it hard for