[Staff] SDSU Website Accessibility

[Darrell Irwin]

In order to provide access to all potential viewers, all SDSU Websites must
comply with the CSU Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) accessibility
requirements and the SDSU University Policy on Universal Access to
Information Technology Services and Resources in both their web page design
and content. Information on the requirements of the SDSU ATI project can be
found at http://access.sdsu.edu. Biannually, in December and June of each
year, an accessibility scan is made of SDSU websites. The last scan was run
in December of 2011. The President's Cabinet recently reviewed this scan,
and is looking to see significant improvement in the scan to be run on June
1, 2011. For the College of Engineering, our websites scanned were found to
have an average of 86% of the pages scanned that did not meet the ATI
requirements.

 

To prepare for the June 1, 2012 scan there are some remediation actions that
can be taken to quickly improve our web sites accessibility. Academic
Affairs will be running a scan of AA websites on May 1, 2012 to test for
accessibility improvements. The following steps can have an immediate impact
on our accessibility scans:

 

1.       Have your webmaster obtain an account for the university compliance
testing software, Compliance Sheriff. If they do not presently have an
account, send an email to cfreidl at mail.sdsu.edu requesting a username and
password for Compliance Sheriff. Compliance Sheriff allows the webmaster to
do compliance scans of their websites, and review audit reports of the
scans. Detailed error reports are generated for compliance failures.

 

2.       Remove any websites that are not being maintained and are no longer
needed.

 

3.       The single most important thing that can be done to make a web page
accessible is to include alternative text for every non-text element
(graphics, images, etc) using the ALT attribute on every IMG element in the
HTML code for your web pages. This is by far the most common error seen on
the Compliance Sheriff Scan Reports. Information on providing a text
equivalent for each non-text element can be found at
http://www.jimthatcher.com/webcourse2.htm.

 

4.       Provide a notation text and a link to an applet, plug-in or other
application when the web page requires such applet, plug-in or application
to interpret page content. For example, if your web page links to a pdf,
word, or AutoCad document, the page must contain notation that a reader is
required and provide a link to the reader that will interpret the pdf, Word
or AutoCad document. The following is an example of the required notation
and link for a pdf document:  Note: documents in Portable Document Format
(PDF) require Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or higher to view; download Adobe
Acrobat Reader <http://get.adobe.com/reader/> .

 

The goal for SDSU is to make significant progress in bringing our Web pages
into compliance with the CSU ATI. It is very important that we make progress
in our compliance. On May 1, 2012, Academic Affairs will run updated scans
on our web sites and is looking to measure the extent of improvement. For
the June 1, 2012 CSU reporting process, the passing percentage is 80% for
sites. Any websites that do not meet this passing score will have to obtain
a temporary exemption to be approved by the Dean and the Provost. The
exemption request will require a plan of action to bring the site into
compliance. In addition, any web page not in compliance will require a
process be developed by which users can access the same information in an
accessible format.

 

The access.sdsu.edu website will be updated with information as we progress
toward the June 1 scan. There will be periodic meetings of SDSU Web
Developers on the developers web list. Subscribe to this list at
sdsuwebdev at lists.sdsu.edu. This list is the primary means of communicating
and collaborating regarding ATI Web page standards from the University ATI
Initiative's group.

 

It is an important SDSU initiative that individuals of all abilities, have
access to SDSU information and resources. Thanks for all your effort to
ensure that our web pages are accessible to our community. Please let me
know if you have any questions or need additional information.

 

Darrell

 

Darrell K. Irwin

Director, Resource Management

College of Engineering

Ext 48290

Fax 46005

Email:  dirwin at mail.sdsu.edu

 

 


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