Accessibility guidelines and considerations

Many guides and resources on accessibility are available. The main standards that should guide your work are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and the inclusive publishing approach.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organisation for the internet. It has developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which have become an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard for making web content more accessible.

The guidelines apply to websites and to any file (e.g. PDF, Microsoft Word, video) placed on websites (see the WCAG 2.2(Opens in a new tab/window) and Web Accessibility Initiative(Opens in a new tab/window) websites). Public websites managed by Australian Government departments and their agencies, universities, and other educational institutions apply WCAG.

WCAG defines accessible content as follows:

• Perceivable. The information and user interface components must be presented to users in ways they can engage with through at least 1 of their senses. For users with visual impairment, the content must be available through braille or voice recordings. Nontext content (such as images and graphics) must be described by machine-readable text alternatives.

• Operable. Users must be able to operate the website’s user interface and navigate through its structure. The structure should be logical and intuitive, with functionalities in predictable places for those with limited vision or cognitive capacity. Navigation must not require an action that the user cannot perform, or manual dexterity beyond the abilities of a person with limited hand–eye motor control.

• Understandable. Users must be able to understand the content. This means that it must be clearly written without complex language for mixed audiences. It must anticipate lower levels of literacy in those with cognitive disability, or with limited educational, social or linguistic resources.

• Robust. The content must be reliably delivered by a wide variety of user devices and systems, and in formats that can be interpreted accurately by all the standard browsers and assistive technologies, whether on computer or mobile device screens.

WCAG has 3 standards of conformance: A, AA and AAA. Each is progressively more stringent in its requirements and includes the criteria of the lower level. In WCAG 2.2 (the latest version, released in 2023):

• A represents the baseline standard, providing some basic features to facilitate accessibility

• AA provides a higher level of accessibility, and is generally adequate for most users and compatible with most assistive technologies – this is the standard targeted by Australian Government websites, and their departments and agencies

• AAA provides accessibility for the widest range of individuals with disability – this standard is important for websites designed specifically for people with disability (e.g. a website for users who are hearing impaired or vision impaired).

The accessibility level you target for your content will depend on your organisation and your audience. The higher standards are more time consuming and restrictive for design and content, but will be of most benefit for audiences who need accessible content.

Inclusive publishing

Making content accessible is sometimes described as ‘inclusive publishing’. Inclusive publishing aims to tackle the specific issues in accessing information for readers with print disabilities. These are defined by the Australian Inclusive Publishing Initiative(Opens in a new tab/window) as ‘any visual, perceptual or physical condition that creates an inability to read, or a difficulty in reading, printed material’ (Inclusive publishing in Australia, 2019(Opens in a new tab/window)), including:

• low vision

• colourblindness 

• increased sensitivity to excessive brightness of colours

• age-related vision problems

• conditions that make it difficult to hold a book or turn pages (e.g. arthritis, multiple sclerosis, neuromuscular disorders)

• physical disabilities or injuries that limit finger dexterity or mobility

• perceptual disabilities (e.g. dyslexia) 

• temporary disabilities (e.g. eye infection, broken arm, ‘situational’ disability such as low light)

• not being a ‘visual’ learner

• low literacy or learning difficulties

• first language other than English.

Preparing electronic content for full access by those with print disabilities involves attention to 3 aspects: 

• Medium. Inclusive design is flexible in its presentation of content to take advantage of the multimedia possibilities of electronic publication. For example, information can be presented in both visual (text, graphics, video) and audio (sound file) formats, with support from captions and audio descriptions.

• Content. Inclusive publications contain responsive content that can be interpreted by assistive technologies. This means, for example, avoiding purely visual references (e.g. the table on the right, above/below) that have traditionally been associated with print layouts. Text must be structured and tagged so that a screen reader can read it. Links should make sense as standalone text (see Text accessibility).

• Structure. In print documents, formatting helps to mark the structure on every page. For inclusive electronic publications, the structure must also be clearly marked so that assistive technologies can articulate it for users, and help them to navigate the content efficiently. Heading tags should be used to flag content hierarchy and support users in finding their way through. Similarly, tables should be marked up with HTML elements so that their structure can be interpreted properly by screen readers.

Considerations for content development

Content can be presented in many ways – websites, Word or RTF files, PDFs or printed material. All these formats can be made accessible. Sometimes this will mean providing alternative formats, such as electronic versions of print products. For example, the Australian Government recommends that documents online should be presented as accessible HTML content, with an accessible PDF or Word file as optional extras.

In brief, to create accessible content, you need to consider:

• web development, including
  • ensuring that the content is not too large or complex to be downloaded
  • ensuring that all elements on the page can be accessed and operated using the keyboard
• ensuring that the content will work with different technologies and platforms
• writing (see Text accessibility, Word file accessibility and PDF accessibility), including
  • ensuring that the language is clear and easy to read
  • using styles to tag content and using headings in order (heading level 1, level 2, etc)
  • structuring content logically and consistently
• design (see Alternative (alt) text, Table accessibility, Graph accessibility, Image accessibility and Video accessibility), including
  • maintaining strong colour contrasts between foreground and background
  • increasing areas around a target for selecting
  • providing alt text for all images and diagrams.

One of the key tests for accessible content is whether it can be read by a screen reader – that is, a program that converts text to speech. Content must pass a range of requirements to achieve this. Some programs include such a tool (eg Read Out Loud for Adobe Acrobat and the Speak Selected Text button in some versions of Microsoft Word). Some screen readers are standalone applications that can work with many programs (eg NVDA for PCs, VoiceOver for Macs, ChromeVox, ClickHear, JAWS).

If you have recorded speech in your content, you may also need to test your content with a speech-to-text converter or automatic speech recognition software. This allows users with hearing impairment to view a written version of audio content.