Web Accessibility
William & Mary is working to enhance our digital accessibility standards and requirements to meet or exceed new federal regulations that make accessible the services, programs and activities offered by the university through web and mobile applications.
Significant Cascade updates will begin in January 2025 to help improve the accessibility of your content to meet the compliance deadline of April 2026.
At the click of a mouse, the world is at your fingertips — that is, if you can use a mouse and see the screen and hear the audio. In other words, if you don’t have a disability of any kind.
Each of the major categories of disabilities (visual, hearing, motor, cognitive) requires specific adaptations in web content design. Most accessibility principles can be implemented easily and will not impact your site's overall look and feel.
University Web & Design handles most web accessibility centrally in our page templates, but there are several ways you can help ensure your webpages are accessible for all web users.
General Web Accessibility
- Our design uses a color contrast checker to verify accessibility for our fonts, etc.
- We require alt text on images.
- We use CSS instead of decorative images in our web design.
- We added WAI-ARIA Landmark roles to our page templates (W3C recommended, these provide assistive technologies navigation advantages).
- Cascade includes a basic accessibility check on page submission
Ways to Make Your Site Accessible
Hyperlink Phrases Rather Than Single Words
Do not use "here" or "click here." Phrases are easier to spot but should be descriptive. Descriptive phrases are crucial to meeting accessibility guidelines. For those using screen readers, hearing "link click here" is frustrating at best.
Make Images Accessible
To optimize accessibility, usability, and design, use text-free graphics and photos only.
- Images on the page: All of your images must have "alt text" that is brief, descriptive and can serve as a reasonable alternative to the image; this gives screen readers and those unable to load images something to work with. Watch out for redundancy in your alt text and leave out phrases such as "Image of" or similar extraneous content in your alt text.
- Image file names: Giving your images meaningful file names can add additional context — it's also great for search engines and your general file maintenance. Try something like crim-dell-bridge.jpg instead of IMG0123.jpg.
Make Documents Accessible
Your informational content should be created as webpages and not uploaded as PDFs or other file types. Cascade webpages are more accessible for those using assistive technology and easier for your visitors to view across their devices.
Content that must be presented as a document is only considered accessible if it meets certain technical criteria and can be used by people with disabilities. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure your documents are accessible before uploading them to Cascade.
Use Proper Heading Structure
When encountering a lengthy web page, sighted users often scroll the page quickly and look for headings to get an idea of the structure and content of the page. Screenreader and other assistive technology users can also navigate web pages by heading structure, assuming true headings are used (as opposed to text that is simply big and bold). Do not use bold text to give the visual appearance of headings — use actual Heading 5 and/or Heading 6 for all content headings. WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) lists all the reasons semantic structure is important.
Add Captions to Videos
Embedded YouTube videos on the W&M website must have captions. You can use YouTube's auto-generate function, but you must manually review them as they are only about 95% accurate and often incorrectly display proper nouns—for example, the university's name or a speaker's name. You can also enlist the help of a captioning service to caption your videos for you.
When followed, many Cascade Writing & Style Guide guidelines improve our site's accessibility.
Don't Ignore the Accessibility Checker
When you submit edits, Cascade's built-in content checker includes a report of basic accessibility issues. During this step, be sure to review and address any flagged items.
