Universal usability for Yale web pages

Yale web authors should design their content to meet prevailing standards for universal usability, as outlined below. While these guidelines are often thought of as “accessibility” rules for the benefit of “handicapped people,” universal usability techniques increase the usability and flexibility of content for all readers, and have important side benefits in making our Yale content visible through a wide variety of display devices, and more effectively visible to search engines.

Guidelines for Yale web pages

All Yale pages should meet the currently prevailing accessibility standards outlined in the resources below. Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act, or “508 standards” are widely considered to be the minimum practical guidelines for web pages designed for a wide range of audiences and physical capabilities. Section 508 compliance does not impose complex or unreasonable hurdles for web content authors, and all Yale content should meet 508 guidelines.

Making your web content more accessible is not very difficult, and provides major benefits to all audiences in ease of use, search engine visibility, and compatibility with the growing range of portable web display devices.

Proper markup and semantics

Always use proper semantic markup for your web content. For example, all headings should be marked as headings (H1, H2, etc.). All lists should be marked up as lists (ordered or unordered). Never choose an HTML tag based on how it looks, as this may confuse screen readers for the blind, and may also decrease the relevance ranking of your content to web search engines.

Use alternate text for all images and text within your images

Always provide alternate (“alt”) text labels for content graphics or photographs you use on your pages, so that nonvisual users with screen reader software will have some indication of the presence and nature of your visual content. Most content management systems in use at Yale (YaleSite, Tridion, Cascade) and web development programs (Dreamweaver, Contribute) will prompt you to supply alternate text for images. The alternate text you supply for images is also very important for the search visibility of your visual content, as web search engines spiders can’t “read” images directly, and rely on the alternate text to assess the content of your images.

Provide transcriptions for all audio or video content

Consider providing transcription captions for critical audiovisual content in your site. There are transcription services that can supply transcripts relatively inexpensively, and all the major digital audiovisual formats can be adapted for transcription captioning. As with other forms of “alternate” text labeling, transcription captions also make your audiovisual content visible to search engines like Google and the local Yale search engines.

Careful attention to your page headers and page titles

Always supply a concise, informative page title for your web pages, and make sure that the same content keywords appear in both your major page headers and the page title. Titles are the first and most important thing many readers see, as page titles form the basis for bookmark text and the title text in search engine listings. Your pages will be easier to understand, and will rank more highly in search engines if your titles and headings agree, and properly describe the content of the page.

Universal usability resources

References

Horton, S. 2006. Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Universal Usability - www.universalusability.com

Yale University

Communications | Web publishing