14. Make your site accessible
Accessibility guidelines
Many of the constraints included in the custom Red multisite are intended to assure that UIC websites are accessible and usable for all. UIC is committed to accessibility and follows the federal Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) and W3C Accessibility Standards.
- Usability refers to the users’ experience on your website. This includes a range of factors that you control: what content do your users need and want, how can they find it, how can they understand it, and much more. Some of these factors are built into Red, such as how we use menus and breadcrumbs for navigation, and others are dependent on you as the content manager. For more on usability, see the links below.
- Every image should have alt text keywords associated with it. Alt text is required for accessibility and should provide a meaningful description of the information conveyed by the image. It is also beneficial to SEO, as your images will show up in outside user searches within search engine image queries based on your alt text. Do not use phrases like “image of”, “picture of”, or “screenshot of” or nonsense words when adding alt text.
Help with digital accessibility
The Digital Accessibility Resource Hub provides guidelines and resources to help the UIC community learn more about accessibility and how to understand and comply with federal and state mandates.