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Accessibility: Tips and Bad Examples

(a work in progress)

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Why Accessibility?

Accessibility, usability, and universal design are all related concepts.  We can call a designed object accessible when its meaning and function can be accessed by people with all abilities, including people with physical and cognitive limitations.  Accessibility criteria form a useful legal threshold that constitutes the foundation of usability best practices -- you can't consider usability or universal design without considering accessibility.

Designing accessibility into your guides serves (at least) three purposes:

  1. You make your information and services available to the widest possible population of students and faculty.
  2. By conforming to the guidelines established under the CSU-wide Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) you support CSUN's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (section 508) and protect the institution from lawsuits.
  3. Your guide is more likely to translate well onto a variety of different-sized screens, be comprehensible when auto-translated into different languages.

Keyboard Navigation and Content Order

  • A person using a screen reader should be able to hear the meaningful text, image and link content on your page from beginning to end as you intended it.
  • A person with limited mobility should be able to navigate through your page using only the keyboard in the order the content is displayed, and operate all links, forms, and media.
  • To ensure usability for mobile users, narrow your browser window in preview format to ensure that the most critical information is easy to get to on the phone as well.

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