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Web Guidelines

The University of West Florida is committed to providing equal access to its programs, services, and activities through electronic information technology (EIT). An accessible EIT environment enhances usability for everyone. The UWF community is collectively responsible for assuring the technologies we choose, use, and create are fully accessible.

Web Accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to websites, by people with disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users have equal access to information and functionality (wikipedia.org).

While this is not an exhaustive list, web accessibility efforts aim to address the following areas:

  • Visual - Visual impairments including blindness, low vision and various types of color blindness
  • Motor / Mobility - Difficulty or inability to use the hands due to conditions such as Parkinson's Disease, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, stroke
  • Auditory - Hearing impairments including deafness or hard of hearing
  • Seizures - Epileptic seizures caused by visual strobe or flashing effects
  • Cognitive / Intellectual - Developmental disabilities, learning disabilities and cognitive disabilities, affecting memory, attention, and time needs

Assistive Technologies

Many people use assistive technologies such as screen readers, captioning software, specially designed mouse devices and keyboards, and more to access and enjoy web content. The WCAG 2.0 standards introduce a way to ensure our web presence's underlying code and content is written and created in such a way that these assistive technologies can make sense of our content and structure. For a brief example of how one might use a screen reader to browse the internet, please view this JAWS Demonstration Video.

Web Accessibility Training

Web Accessibility Guidelines is a training module that introduces tools and techniques for trained web managers to easily ensure that their websites are accessible to users with disabilities, organized in a list of Confluence pages for easy access for all campus Web Managers.

See below for all online resources developed by the Institutional Communications web team related to web accessibility.