Accessibility
The Division of Extension is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. These laws require that people with disabilities have equal access to our programs and services. Electronic communication is a primary delivery method for programs and information, and we cannot provide an equal opportunity to people with disabilities if our electronic communication is inaccessible.
Where To Get Help
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Digital Accessibility & User Experience can help answer questions you may have about creating accessible technology and content or connect you with the right group.
Here are a few simple things you can do to start making your work more accessible:
- Provide alternate text whenever you add an image to a post or page.
- Use descriptive hyperlinks instead of “click here.”
- If you’re going to be posting PDF files to your site, make sure your PDF is accessible.
- Provide a descriptive title for the PDF on your post or page. For example, if your newsletter pdf has a convoluted file name like “news7-2012.pdf” then you need to provide a much more descriptive and user-friendly title to the file on your webpage.
- If you create the PDF from a Word document, make sure the Word document is accessible before you convert it to PDF. You may want to read the following help article from WebAIM: PDF Accessibility: Converting Documents to PDF.
- Adobe Acrobat also provides helpful information about creating accessible PDF files from Word.
More Resources
UW-Madison Make it accessible website
How to create accessible video and audio content
UW-Madison Web Accessibility PolicyCheck out these Tech Tuesday and online resources for more in-depth instructions:
