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Simple Informative Images
If images are designed to communicate information to the user, they must be described. If they are complex images with a lot of important detail (e.g., graph, chart, diagram) see the next section on Complex Informative Images. In contrast, if images are simple (e.g., logos, buttons, photographs) a short description should be added to the alt attribute of the <img> element. The description should describe the content of the image as succinctly as possible. The goal is to provide access to the content of the image, without burdening the user with superfluous details.
Additional information is available on the AccessComputing 30 Tips for Web Accessibility site, Tip #1: Add proper alt text to images.
Complex Informative Images
If images contain a lot of important detail (e.g., graph, chart, diagram) these should include a short title or summary in the alt attribute, but a long description that includes more detail should also be provided. A long description can include any HTML necessary to communicate the content of the image, including data tables.
Historically, the long description has been provided on a separate web page. In HTML5, it is now valid to include a long description on the current page. The longdesc attribute is added to the <img> element, has a URL as its value, pointing to the location of the description. The URL can point to a separate page, or to the id of a container on the current page. If added to the current page, it is ok to hide the description using CSS display:none.
Screen readers and supporting browsers will inform the user that a long description is available, and the user can choose whether they want to read that description.
Decorative Images
If images are used solely for decorative purposes, they should be added to the page using CSS, not with the HTML <img> element. If for some reason an image needs to be added using HTML, the <img> element must have an empty alt attribute (alt=””). This is a standard technique for communicating to screen readers that the image should be ignored.
The University of Washington's Technology Accessibility Specialist Terrill Thompson has explored this problem in depth and provides recommendations in his blog post Accessible Dropdown Menus Revisited.
That said, data tables are still useful for presenting data in rows and columns. A few specific HTML tags are required in order to ensure that data tables that are accessible to screen reader users. Without these tags, users who are unable to see the table can find it very difficult or impossible to understand the relationships between table headers and the cells within their scope.
The specific tags required depends on whether the table is simple or complex.
Simple Table
A simple table has a single header at the top of each column, and optionally a single header in the first column of each row. It has no nested columns or rows. To make a simple table accessible, apply the following techniques:
Complex Table
A complex table is any table that is not a simple table, as defined in the preceding section. There might be nested rows or columns, or headers might be located in places other than the first row or column. These sorts of tables can be very challenging for screen reader users to understand. To ensure their accessibility, apply the following techniques:
Additional Sources of Information
Also, speech recognition users can click links with a voice command like “click” followed by the link text. Therefore it’s helpful to keep link text short and easy to say.
For both of these reasons, long URLs should be avoided as link text (short URLs like ucdenver.edu are ok since they’re easy to say and stand-alone independently of context).
With the first purpose in mind, headings should be used in proper order whenever possible. That is, you shouldn’t have H2 headings with no parent H1 heading, and all headings should be in order with no heading levels skipped.
Additional information is available on the AccessComputing 30 Tips for Web Accessibility site, Tip #2: Use Headings Properly.
Avoid Using Color to Communicate Information
Some users are unable to perceive color differences, or may not perceive color the same way you do. Therefore it is important to avoid using color alone to communicate information. For example, if link text is blue, it should also be underlined so users who are unable to perceive color differences can distinguish links from surrounding text.
Choose Colors with Ample Contrast
Some users have difficulty perceiving text if there is too little contrast between foreground and background. The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 require that color combinations meet clearly defined contrast ratios. In order to meet the guidelines at Level AA, text or images of text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (or 3:1 for large text). In order to meet the guidelines at the stricter Level AAA, the contrast ratio must be at least 7:1 (or 4.5:1 for large text).
Several free tools have been developed that make it easy to check color combinations for WCAG 2.0 compliance. Following are a few examples: