Digital accessibility expands beyond the subsections below. You can use best practices in your everyday life when writing emails or making a social media post. Apply the general guidelines below to all digital content or find application-specific guidelines.
To create a welcoming digital environment, designers, developers, and content editors need to be aware of and well-versed in accessibility standards and techniques for meeting those standards.
Accessibility Checklist
Utilize an accessibility checklist when building webpages to help implement best practices across your whole site.
Training opportunities are available to Northwestern University course instructors, faculty, staff, and students who build and maintain digital assets.
View the Accessibility Checklist
Best Practices for Accessible Digital Content
- Use descriptive alternate text for images.
- Use proper headings and a clear structure so the page is readable and works well with screen readers.
- Write descriptive link text.
- Make sure audio and video content has accurate captions and transcripts.
- Don’t upload inaccessible documents (word, pdf, excel, ppt) to public pages. Remediate them before posting.
- Check that your text and background have enough color contrast.
Article-Specific Best Practices
Images
Images: Accessible images allow users of assistive technologies equal access to information provided by an image.
Headings
Headings: For assistive technology users who use screen readers and keyboards to access and navigate web content, headings are a tool to allow scanning of information. Headings enable the user to more quickly understand site architecture, page structure and site organization.
Links
Links: The web audience that uses assistive technologies can access web links easily by listing links and tabbing through them if the links are marked up correctly.
Tables
Tables: A screen reader reads each cell of the table out loud, left to right and top to bottom. Accessible markup is necessary to ensure that the assistive technology user can obtain accurate table data.
Electronic Documents
Electronic Documents: For an inclusive user experience, it is important to make sure that the documents that link from your site are accessible.
Video & Audio
Video & Audio: Any videos or audio recordings that are created for a course must have captions and/or a transcript available. In a sense, captions and transcripts are another form of alternative text for deaf and hard-of-hearing users.
Writing
Writing: Adhering to best practices for web writing will enable all audiences to quickly scan and efficiently locate web information.