IT Accessibility Regulations
The following University, state, and federal regulations pertain to the accessibility of websites and other electronic and information resources. Technical accessibility standards and guidelines for websites and web applications may be found on the Web Accessibility Standards page.
Texas A&M University
- Standard Administrative Procedure (SAP) 29.01.04.M0.02 - Accessibility of Electronic and Information Resources (pdf)
- Standard Administrative Procedure (SAP) 29.01.04.M1.01 - Web Accessibility Procedures (including Linking and Indexing) (pdf)
Texas A&M University System
State
- Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 206, Institution of Higher Education Websites
- Texas Administrative Code (TAC) 213, Accessibility Standards for Institutions of Higher Education
- Texas Government Code 2054, Subchapter M. Access to Electronic and Information Resources by Individuals with Disabilities
Federal
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
- Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as referenced by Texas Administrative Code
- Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
Contact the Technology Services accessibility team if you have any questions or comments.
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.