All web documents should be divided into short sections for readability, and should be organized using a clear hierarchy of headings and subheadings. This is true regardless of whether the document is delivered using HTML, Microsoft® Word, Adobe® PDF, or another document format.
HTML tables were originally intended to be used for presenting tabular data, not for layout. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C®) discourages use of tables for layout because they are striving for a web in which content and structure are completely separate from presentation. This allows content to be rendered meaningfully across a wide variety of devices. In the W3C's world view, cascading style sheets (CSS) is the vehicle by which presentation and layout are defined.
With CSS, navigational menus can appear visually at the top of a document, despite their location at the bottom of the document in the HTML source code. This technique is gaining popularity because by placing the main content first in the document's source code, websites can potentially attain better search engine placement. This technique also eliminates the need for a "skip navigation" link, since screen readers don't read the navigation links until the end. However, it creates the opposite problem: The need for an efficient means of jumping quickly to the navigation system.
"Skip navigation" links are same-page links that allow users to skip past redundant navigational links that often appear across the top and/or down the left side of websites. For an overview of these links, see the AccessIT Knowledge Base article What is a "skip navigation" link?.
The Quick Reference Guide to Section 508 Resource Documents provides information to assist government agencies in making informed decisions about electronic and information technology (E&IT) acquisitions to assure Section 508 compliance.
In HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the "longdesc" attribute was specifically designed to allow for long descriptions of complex images. This contrasts with the "alt" attribute, which describes relatively simple images using a minimal amount of text. The "longdesc" attribute allows authors to link to a separate page (for example, longdesc="https://www.washington.edu/doit/img1description.html") in which the image is described in detail. This is particularly useful for complex images such as graphs and charts.
Peer review tools are software tools that are designed to simulate work sharing in a classroom environment by allowing participants to review the work of others and offer feedback. These tools are available as independent software applications and are included in some distance learning courseware packages.
There is a growing trend on websites in education and elsewhere toward providing a navigational system that includes dynamic menus, menus that expand as users point to them with the mouse. Proponents of dynamic menus argue that they reduce page clutter and provide a familiar, organized interface to a website, comparable to that of most software applications.
The following sampling of online resources includes both websites and discussion lists related to accessible information technology. Many of the websites listed include online courses and/or tutorials.
DO-IT
Resources on electronic and information technology, postsecondary education, and careers for people with disabilities.
In most cases of discrimination on the basis of disability in a postsecondary institution, and certainly in web accessibility cases, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (§504) and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) will be appropriate avenues for bringing a complaint. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has responsibility for enforcing both these federal laws in public educational settings and would hear a complaint regarding inaccessible websites.