Content on The Oxford Magazine’s website must comply with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. Here’s a summary of how to make your web content accessible:
Text content
- Page titles should be descriptive and not duplicated.
- Headings should be descriptive and properly tagged and nested.
- Link text should make sense in isolation (and not repeated for different link destinations).
- Instructions should not rely on sensory abilities only, such as vision
- Tables should be simple, easy to use with a keyboard and have descriptions set using ‘caption’.
- Acronyms and initialisms should be explained in full the first time you mention them.
- Technical information requiring a high reading age should have a plain English summary.
- Content should be written and formatted so it’s easy to scan and understand.
Images, video and audio content
- Images should have alternative text (alt text) description to explain what the image shows.
- Images should not contain text (except logos).
- Video iFrame HTML embed code must include title=”” with a description of the content inside the quotation marks.
- Videos (prerecorded) should include closed captions (CC) describing any dialogue and sound effects.
- Videos (prerecorded) should include an audio description (AD) for any visual information not explained in the main audio track.
- Videos (prerecorded) should be made available featuring British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation where appropriate.
- Videos (live) including CC, AD and BSL is best practice, but not always practical and not mandatory.
- Videos should have a title attribute included in the HTML embed code
- Audio content should have a transcript
PDFs and other documents
- Titles should be descriptive and set in the file’s properties
- Headings should be descriptive, set using Styles (not bold, underline or making the text bigger) and nested properly
- Instructions should not rely on sensory abilities, such as vision.
- Link text should make sense in isolation (and not used for different link destinations)
- Images (including charts, shapes and icons) should have a meaningful alt text description, and not contain text (except logos).
- Tables should have a description, and be simple enough that you can tab through them (but never used for page layout).
- Videos should include closed captions (CC), plus added audio description (AD) where needed.
- Audio content should include access to a transcript.
- Bookmarks should be added to long documents.
- Slides in PowerPoint decks have their own specific accessibility requirements, such as unique titles and reading order. Please contact us for more information.
- Spreadsheets in Excel have their own specific accessibility requirements, such as good sheet structure and setting column headings correctly. Please contact us for more information.
- Google accessibility checker should be used before saving and publishing to find accessibility issues, e.g. poor colour contrast.
- Documents should be made available in accessible alternative formats (such as easy read or large print) where appropriate
Maps
- It’s difficult to make maps accessible (for example a Google Map embedded on a contact page).
- If a map exists to provide directions, this information should be published in text format in addition to the map.
- Map iFrame HTML embed code must include title=”” with a description of the content inside the quotation marks.