This page provides instructions on computer accessibility.
Getting Started
For more information on accessibility guidelines, policies and laws, please see:
- Section 508 on IT Accessibility Laws and Policies
- United States Access Board’s Guidelines and Standards
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Standards
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
- Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM) WCAG 2.0ʻs Checklist
Training
To learn how to fix accessibility issues, please see UHʻs Accessibility Training page.
Creating accessible websites & testing them:[1]
Information on how to create accessible websites may be found on the UH’s Accessible Web Design Guidelines page.
To test your websites for accessibility issues, please see the following tools:
- Siteimprove
- Siteimprove’s free Google Chrome Extension
- SortSite WCAG 2.0 Compliance Checking
- WAVE
- W3C Markup Evaluation
- WebAIM’s Contrast Checker
Note: For any extension mentioned above from the Chrome Web Store, in order to download and install the extension, you will need to log out of your UH account on your web browser. Once the installation is finished you can then log back in.
Creating accessible documents & files:
UH’s Information Technology Services (ITS) creating accessible documents page provides resources for: Adobe Acrobat and InDesign, Microsoft Office for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and Google tools Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
For PDF remediation services, please see axesPDF for Word and CommonLook.
To learn how to fix accessibility issues for documents and files, please see UHʻs Accessibility Training page.
Creating accessible videos with closed captions:
Closed captioning allows for viewers to toggle on/off captions or subtitles when viewing videos. In order to play a video that allows for closed captioning, one must either have a player, like YouTube, or “merge” both a sidecar file (.srt, .vtt, etc.) and video in a player that allows for this feature.
The following are free to minimal cost resources on creating accessible videos with closed captions:
- YouTube explains how to edit the closed captioning feature in YouTube.
- Uploaded videos on Facebook can also be closed caption.
- Service-for-fee like Rev.com and Amara allows its users to add videos in public spaces.
The following are paid services available for captioning videos:
- Otter.ai (Standard Tier) – Utilizes powerful AI tools to create and collaborate on transcriptions.
- 3Play Media (Premium Tier) – Their three step process for transcription uses speech recognition, human editing, and human quality assurance to provide the highest accuracy.
For more information on available captioning tools, and for help in determining which tool may best suit your specific needs, please refer to our Creating Accessible Media page.
Creating auditory transcriptions:
Providing auditory descriptions will also aid with a visual representation. Please see the following links: Web Video Text Tracts or WebVTT and Able Player.
More information on accessibility at UH:
The 2017 IT All-Campus Workshop includes Google Slides for accessibility requirements and policies.
The Center for Disability Studies’ Media Center offers accessibility services. For more information, please contact Dr. Kiriko Takahashi at kiriko@hawaii.edu.
General information on accessibility:
- U.S. Health & Human Services checklists for making files accessible.
- University of Washington’s (UW) Faculty Room – information on basic Universal Design Principles, additional faculty resources, and a knowledge base of case studies, practices and Q&As regarding accessibility.
- Why icon fonts pose an accessibility problem:
- YouTube video (28:57), Slides, and Github blog
- Procurement guidelines for other Universities:
- University of Washington’s Procuring Accessible IT
- University of California’s Guidelines for Purchasing Accessible IT Products or Services
[1] While automated accessibility auditors are excellent resources, they still require a knowledgeable person to address false-positives and false-negatives in their reporting.