Managing accessibility
How to manage and improve accessibility
Creating accessible digital content is critical to meet Harvard’s policy standards and ensure an equitable experience for all users. HarvardSites WordPress has been developed with accessible features built into components, but if content added to the site isn‘t accessible, the whole site is at risk of introducing accessibility barriers. By thoughtfully following accessibility best practices for creating content, we can make sure our digital materials are accessible to everyone. The following are key considerations for creating accessible content:
- Titles and headings: Write unique and descriptive page titles, and use hierarchical levels for headings.
- Readability: Use plain language, keep paragraphs short, and use lists where appropriate.
- Links: Write clear, unique link text so that users know where the link is going.
- Alternative text: Write simple, helpful, and descriptive text alternatives for images (see When to add alt text for best practices for providing alternative text).
See Content Creator Essentials on the Digital Accessibility website for more on creating accessible content.
How to preview accessibility alerts on a page
- When working on a draft page, click Save Draft in the upper right prior to publishing.
- To the right of the Save Draft button, click the laptop icon, which will give you the option to Preview in a new tab.
This Preview window will alert you to accessibility issues that are present on the page before you publish your page so that you have an opportunity to fix those errors. For instance, if you do not add alt text to all of your images, you will have alerts displayed to allow you to add alt text, mark as decorative or ignore it because you are still editing the content of the page. You will notice a window that will display Next Issue to help you view all of the issues and determine solutions to fix. Please make sure that all accessibility errors within your control have been resolved prior to publishing your page.
Here is the full documentation on the Accessible Content plugin, which powers this feature
