Web Accessibility Plan
Texas A&M University is committed to making its web content accessible. The goal is for all Texas A&M websites and web applications to comply with the Web Accessibility Policy and meet Texas A&M’s required Web Accessibility Standards.
The Web Accessibility Plan provides for a systematic process to enhance web accessibility and support compliance goals. Texas A&M University will work towards compliance goals using an incremental approach, as the plan prioritizes web areas of focus into five tiers.
| Tier | Web Areas of Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 |
|
| 2 | Key Public Entry Points |
| 3 | Web applications designed specifically for students and e-learning courses/modules |
| 4 | Web applications designed specifically for staff and faculty members |
| 5 | Other Texas A&M websites and web applications not listed above |
Automated web accessibility testing tools, in conjunction with manual procedures, will be used to assess the accessibility of websites and web applications. On-going, automated web accessibility testing conducted by Texas A&M IT will be used to monitor and sustain compliance goals. The results of these scans/tests will be reported to webmasters for review and corrective action, and to executive management, if needed. Additionally, Texas A&M IT will send web accessibility compliance reports to the Web Accessibility Coordinator on a quarterly basis. Accessibility guidance resources will be made available to support webmasters in developing and maintaining accessible websites and web applications.
A key component of the successful, long term implementation of this plan will be regularly scheduled on-going web accessibility testing and assessment of goal achievement in relation to available technologies and resources. Those charged with carrying out this plan will approach the large, complex, and vitally important project with flexibility and a strong commitment to web accessibility.
Did you know?
- In the United States, about 55 million people have a disability (src: 2010 U.S. Census).
- About 1 in 5 Americans have some kind of disability (src: 2010 U.S. Census).
- The percentage of people affected by disabilities is growing as our population ages.
- Two popular, free screen readers are VoiceOver (Mac OS and iOS) and NVDA (Win).
- Good accessibility practices can improve the search ranking of your website.
- Form fields without labels can cause problems for some assistive technology users.
- Low color contrast makes content difficult to see, especially for users with low vision.
- Documents linked on a website need to be accessible too (e.g., PDF and Word files).
- Audio content, like podcasts, need transcripts for deaf or hard of hearing users.
- Online videos should be captioned for deaf or hard of hearing users.
- Using HTML tags correctly is very important for accessibility.
- Descriptive link text helps make a website more accessible. Avoid using "Click here" or "Read more."
- A "screen reader" is an application that reads content aloud to a user.
- There is no "alt tag" in HTML. "Alt" is an attribute used with the img tag.
- HTML uses the alt attribute to provide a text description of an image.
- Alt text should describe an image, if the purpose of the image is to convey information.
- If an image is a link, the alt text for the image should explain where the link goes.
- If an image is only being used for decoration, the alt text should be null (i.e., alt="").
- If a table has headers, using header tags (<th>) will make the table more accessible.
- An accessible website is one that can be navigated and understood by everyone.