Image Alt Text Best Practices for Web Accessibility
Images and graphics can be helpful for your webpage, they make content easier to understand, and they help people orient themselves to the content on your webpage. It is important to add alt tags to your images and graphics, without them it can be frustrating for people to navigate through your site.
Here are some quick and easy best practices to use when writing alt text:
https://support.siteimprove.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115000013031-Accessibility-Image-Alt-text-best-practices
Bold vs. Strong and Italic vs. Emphasis
Bold and italics are often used to highlight words or phrases in a paragraph of text. Using these tags, aids in scanning the content for a person who is sighted. When it comes to the accessibility of your content, we recommend using semantic markup to properly announce style changes to all users.
The Importance of Headings
The user of heading with proper semantic markup is one of the basic principles of web accessibility. Why is the use of headings so important?
https://support.siteimprove.com/hc/en-gb/articles/114094000131-The-importance-of-Headings
Can I use Layout Tables and still have an accessible site?
Although the WCAG 2.0 doesn’t prohibit the use of table layouts it does recommend using CSS based layouts instead. Using the HTML Table element for layout purposes can cause issues for assistive technologies (like screen readers) and goes against the recommended W3C coding practice of separating presentation from content.
PDF File 508 Compliant Checklist
Below is a link to a good resource for making PDF’s 508 compliant
https://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/making-files-accessible/checklist/pdf/index.html
Create Accessible PDFs
Having accessible PDFs on your website is important for the ease of use for your audience and to meet accessibility compliance. We urge you to think thoughtfully about what PDFs are on your website and to only keep what is absolutely necessary. Get rid of outdated PDF files or change them into simple webpages where it is easier to keep accessible content.
If you still need to remediate a PDF for your website you can follow our guide to Creating Accessible PDFs: https://it.cornell.edu/accessibility/create-accessible-pdfs
Web Accessibility and Maps
Making maps accessible presents a challenging concern when being aware of what content you have on your website. There is currently no clear standard on how to make a digital map accessible to people with visual disabilities. Maps contain very detailed and compressed information and it can be difficult to convey all of this information through alternative means. There are, however, some general guidelines to follow when using maps.
https://it.cornell.edu/news/web-accessibility-and-maps/20180525