Transcript of video:
(00:02) Introduction to Web Accessibility
This video is intended to introduce you to the idea of web accessibility. Our digital content that we provide to our constituents needs to be accessible. This concept is backed by a federal ruling from 2024 based on the American with Disabilities Act of 1990, but applying to web content. The ruling set deadlines for government entities.
ESU10's deadline for meeting compliance is April 24th, 2026. Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, they can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with those technologies. Accessibility leads to the opportunities for all individuals to use the same material technologies at the same time and with ease of use.
(00:54) Understanding Variability and Disability
The CAST organization, which we use at ESU10 to support our efforts with universal design for learning, describes this as a person with a disability can acquire, engage, enjoy in these things with ease of use the same way a person without a disability could. And with our work with UDL, we know that variability is the rule, not the exception.
In fact, nearly one out of four adults in the United States has some form of disability. And one out of 18, which is 5.5% of Americans, has a visual disability. We don't always see a disability. Sometimes they look like that first row of images. And sometimes they don't.
When designing digital content, we need to consider that some people have low vision or blindness, even color blindness, dexterity, the fact that it works differently on a mobile browser, that some people have cognitive disabilities, or they use other assisted technology devices such as screen readers.
(01:56) Federal Rule and Deadlines
This new, and I put that in quotes, federal rule provides these deadlines for government entities based on the population they serve. And ESU10 serves more than 50,000 people. So, our deadline is coming up soon. And the recommendation is that we are following the web content accessibility guidelines 2.1AA.
And I've got links to these in in a document I'll share later.
(02:21) What Counts as Web Content?
Web content is defined as the information and experiences available on the web like text, images, sound, videos, documents, Google forms, calendars, and more.
We like to use the acronym POUR to think about how can we make our content accessible.
(02:42) POUR Framework: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust
We want to make sure that it's perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Can people make sense of the content? Can they navigate through it on their device? Is it intuitive and predictable or do they have to spend too much time to figure it out? Is it consistent? And robust really means is it compatible with all devices and with screen readers?
(03:14) SLIDE: Low-Hanging Fruit of Accessibility
Another acronym which a presenter from the cast organization described as the low-hanging fruit of accessibility that anyone can do is slide.
So we have section headings. So our styles are considered, our links are descriptive, we use images, but we provide alternative text to make that content accessible. We design with high contrast and we evaluate with checkers whenever possible.
A great resource that we're going to be basing some of our videos on that we will provide is from NCADEMI, which is really designed for digital educational materials. And so it's great for teachers or people in our roles at ESU10.
So we will delve into each one of those and probably more as the weeks go by here.
(03:43) What We Can Do Now
But what can we do now? I'm just going to pop up some accessibility considerations and then like I said, we're going to have some videos coming out about each one of these.
But we can consider font size, type and color contrast. That we provide those alt text images on our images. That we think about the formatting and heading structure for screen readers. That we provide closed captions on videos. And that our hyperlinks are descriptive and don't say something like click here.
(04:23) Font and Design Considerations
And just a quick thing on font. Just as you're moving forward, as you start designing something new, thinking about what kinds of font you want to use. Don't use too many different styles. A san-serif style is more readable than a serif style on a screen. And so think about that and don't do the handwriting font if you can avoid that. You know, every now and then you might want to draw attention to something, but it's very difficult to read for some people, especially those with cognitive disabilities.
And then the second bullet point here is about size, and it just gives you some suggestions there. Print you can do 10 to 12 point font on the web including if somebody's just on their own personal device 16 point and that includes Google Docs if you're creating something and then slides 18 point minimum. 24 point is ideal and then don't forget that color contrast when you're using text that ratio needs to be 4 1/2 to 1 and there are color contrast checkers that you can use to make sure but basically black on white is probably about 20 to1 and so you're going to be safe if you just stick with that.
(05:23) Video and Presentation Accessibility
For videos, if you um provide a transcript, that's ideal. It could be printed, but it could also be in embedded in, you know, the content you're providing. And then closed captions in YouTube. And then same thing with presentations, maybe providing a printed version, but also if you're presenting using closed captions when you think that it might be appropriate like I am right now in this video. PowerPoint also can do that. The cool thing about PowerPoint is it can translate that closed caption.
(05:52) ESU 10 Accessibility Team
At ESU10, with this new ruling and our deadline looming, we do have an accessibility team consisting of Dr. Wheelock and these other individuals. So, please reach out to any of these people. If you have questions, we're going to be creating content, videos, tips, tricks, templates. We're working on a website.
You can access it here if you want to check it out, that first link. And then you can also just check out this Google doc of resources that I've been sharing with people in my presentations that I've been doing um for designing for accessibility. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.