Accessibility (ADA Compliance)
What is accessibility?
"Accessible" means that people with disabilities can independently obtain the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as people without disabilities, with substantially equivalent ease of use.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 published by the World Wide Web Consortium and are intended to address the following four accessibility principles.
4 Core Principles
Perceivable
Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
Operable
User interface components and navigation must be operable.
Understandable
Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable.
Robust
Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.
What's Involved
Accessibility involves two key issues: how users with disabilities access electronic information and how web content designers and developers enable web pages to function with assistive devices used by individuals with disabilities.
For the user with a disability, the challenge is to identify tools that provide the most convenient access to web-based and other electronic information. For the web content designer/developer, the challenge is to remove the obstacles that prevent accessibility tools from functioning effectively. In many cases, these challenges are relatively simple to overcome, but sometimes the solutions require some additional thought and effort.
Image Accessibility
All images should have alternative text, commonly referred to as Alt Text. Alt text is read by a screen reader. It should adequately describe what is being displayed and why it's important. This allows screen reader users to benefit from the information being conveyed by the image, even if they cannot see it.
Making Your Microsoft Word Document Accessible
Microsoft is making an active effort to make all of their software ADA compliant. Microsoft has a series of available information, how to's and accessibility compliant templates for many of their popular software titles.
- Word: Make your documents accessible
- PowerPoint: Make your presentations accessible
- Excel: Make your spreadsheets accessible
PDF Document Accessibility
Portable Document Format aka PDF is the most widely use format for sending and saving files. All PDFs residing on the CSN.edu or AT.csn.edu web sites must be compliant in order to be posted to either of these web sites. Adobe offers an array of training videos not only for making PDFs ADA compliant but their entire suite of software.
There are three ways to create a PDF, either converting a source file, like a PowerPoint or a Word document to a PDF, scanning a hard copy of a document to PDF, or creating the document in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Accessibility Checker in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
You can use the accessibility checker that is built into your Microsoft Office products to verify your documents are accessible. For more information on how to use this tool, go to:
- Windows: Use the Accessibility Checker on your Windows desktop to find accessibility issues
- Mac: Use the Accessibility Checker on your Mac to find and resolve accessibility issues;
Web Governance Guidelines
This document provides guidelines for anyone involved in developing or maintaining public-facing webpages on behalf of the College of Southern Nevada (CSN), particularly those pages aimed at student recruitment and/or branding of CSN.
WCAG 2.0
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 defines how to make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities.
Converting Office Files
Mac users, Word 2016 on a Mac can create an accessible PDF, but unfortunately previous Mac versions of MS Office cannot be converted to an accessible PDF. Contact User Services in OTS to make sure you have the most current version.
Scanning to PDF
A common method for making PDF documents is to place a paper copy of a document into a scanner and view the newly-scanned document as a PDF with Adobe Acrobat. Unfortunately, scanners only create an image of text, not the actual text itself. This means the content is not accessible to users who rely on assistive technology. Additional modifications must be made to make the document accessible.
Using Acrobat Pro
The Make Accessible action ensures that the PDFs you create in Adobe Acrobat Pro are accessible by meeting WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA standards.