Website Content Accessibility Guidelines

This is a reminder to all Trent University website contributors that as a response to the release of provincial legislation under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), Trent University implemented the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level A (WCAG) international compliance standard for all Trent University website pages in 2014. This is in accordance with Section 14 of the Integrated Accessibility Standards.

The Trent University online website accessibility guide was developed to help all website contributors follow this standard to ensure that all Trent content can provide compliant and accessible webpages and web content to people with disabilities. Any new content created must meet the standards outlined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level A. If someone requests an accessible format of a section on your site, you must be able to provide it to them.

Guidelines for creating accessible documents

• Make a table of contents for long documents

• Always use heading styles

  • Use short titles in headings

  • Ensure all heading styles are in the correct order

  • Use hyperlink text that is meaningful

• Avoid using repeated blank characters

• Avoid using floating objects in the document (e.g. text box frames, layered objects, etc.)

• Use font sizes between 12 and 15 points for body text

• Use fonts of normal weight, rather than bold or light weight fonts. If you do choose to use bold fonts for emphasis, use them sparingly

• Use standard fonts with clear spacing and easily recognized upper and lower case characters. Sans serif fonts (e.g., Arial, Verdana) may sometimes be easier to read than serif fonts (e.g., Times New Roman, Garamond)

• Avoid large amounts of text set all in caps, italic or underlined

• Use normal or expanded character spacing, rather than condensed spacing

• Avoid animated or scrolling text

• Avoid image watermarks

• Include closed captions for any audio

• Add alternative text to image and objects

• Specify column header rows in tables

  • Use simple table structure

  • Avoid using blank cells for formatting

  • Structure layout tables for easy navigation

• Use HTML: Avoid having content available only as PDF, MS Word, etc.

Resources

• General guidelines outlined by the AODA
• Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations
• Creating Accessible Word Documents
  • Creating Accessible Word Documents Video Tutorial
  • Check Your Word Document for Accessibility Issues
• Creating Accessible PDF Documents

This Marketing & Communications bulletin, and others like it are available on the Marketing and Communications Intranet website. If you have any questions please contact webrequest@trentu.ca

Posted on February 2, 2016