Ensuring that UW websites are accessible to users with disabilities is the responsibility of all who work on these sites. This includes web developers, designers, content editors, and others. With this shared responsibility in mind, we work to comply with the ADA rule on digital accessibility.
This page helps DWF content editors create and manage accessible web content. If you have questions about accessibility, contact us at asweb@uw.edu.
Resources for DWF editors
The UW provides many helpful accessibility tools and resources. Those listed below are particularly helpful for DWF editors.
Accessibility tools:
- Editoria11y: This accessibility checker allows editors to find and fix accessibility issues on your pages. Learn more about the Editoria11y accessibility checker.
- DubBot: This automated website accessibility checker runs on all DWF sites. While some issues it finds can be fixed by DWF editors, most issues must be fixed by the web team. We monitor its results regularly. UW-IT manages DubBot, and you can learn more on their DubBot overview page.
- UW Web Checklist: Automated web accessibility checkers, including Editoria11y and DubBot, are unable to guarantee that a website is fully accessible. The DWF web team uses the UW Web Checklist to help manually check DWF sites.
UW web accessibility resources:
- What You Can Do Now
- Get Started: What is digital accessibility?
- Accessible Websites
- IT Accessibility Checklist
Common DWF accessibility issues to check
As a DWF editor, the most important accessibility issues for you to check and fix are listed below. The Editoria11y accessibility checker tool installed on DWF sites should flag most or all of these issues if they are present on your site.
- Headings: Headings act as an outline to help people quickly find information. When adding headings, nest the headings in a hierarchical manner, as you would in an outline or table of contents. For example, start a section with a heading 2 and use a heading 3 for each subsection. Avoid skipping levels — you shouldn't have a heading 3 without a heading 2 above it. (Note that the title of most DWF pages is a heading 1).
- Lists: Bulleted and numbered lists help people quickly digest important content. Screen reading software informs the user that they have landed on a list and provides additional information, such as the number of items in the list. This helps the user decide whether to continue with the list or move on to other content.
- Alt text for images: Enter alt text for all images so that screen readers and search engines can understand what the image is. It needn't be long and detailed, just a basic indication of the image's content. Screen reader software will say something like, "Image: your alt text." See our page on Writing Good Alt Text.
- Ambiguous links: Using "click here" or "read more" does not make the best link text, because it doesn't give screen reader users any indication of where the link goes. The software will say something like, "Link: click here." It is better to use the page title or name of the resource you are linking to. This also helps search engines understand your site better.
- PDF attachments: Authoring well-structured, accessible PDFs requires special steps. Unless you are posting an extremely long document or a form, consider turning the PDF into a standard web page. This will make it easier to read across devices, and easier to maintain over time (cuts out the steps of editing the file, saving the file, uploading the file, etc.)
- Text within images: If the image contains any text, be sure to include that in the alt text, or repeat it within the body of the page for those users or software that can't see the image. Those graphics may look great to you, but they essentially make the content invisible to search engines, users with vision problems, or users with text-only browsers. Avoid putting text in images if at all possible. Use images to add visual interest, use text captions below or next to the image if available, and put the info into the content copy.