Users can simply edit and add content as they normally would and the  system will  automatically  ensure that there is an accessible version of any content created available for impaired users.

The first automated system of its kind, the Lifeline AODA automatic compliance module is sure to make the lives of many of our customers easier in the near future!

This important accessibility item is of course the ALT tag, and it is usually one of the first things you’ll learn about accessibility, solely due to how often it comes up .  It’s essentially an additional piece of HTML you can use to attach text to an image. This is very helpful for making a website accessible… at the most basic level, you can use alt tags to describe a picture placed within your content.  A picture of a beautiful sunset would be labeled as “a picture of a beautiful sunset” in the alt tag. When an ALT tag is defined,  if someone who had impaired vision was using a screen reader to view your website,  the screen reader would inform them that there is a picture of a beautiful sunset under the cursor, thus helping them better understand the content of your website.

Things can get a bit more complicated than that in the real world though.  ALT tags are often a favorite tool of Internet Marketers who are focusing on SEO (search engine optimization),  as it gives them another avenue to insert keywords into a page for their search engine rankings.  However, for accessibility’s sake, you must ensure that you are providing accurate descriptions of your images, and images that aren’t conveying content (i.e. they are purely decorative in nature) must have a null (empty) alt tag — otherwise an impaired visitor using a screen reader would be confused by the ALT tag descriptions.  To address SEO concerns, you can ensure that images used relate to or contain images of your keywords while being relevant to the page content.  Using this method, you can have proper descriptions in your ALT tags as  well as the keywords that are part of an overall SEO campaign.

An acceptable alternative for images that aren’t conveying content is to have them implemented as a CSS background. This method uses CSS code to display the image without actually placing it in the HTML code. However, inserting images as a CSS background is not typically an option available when building content in a CMS system, whereas placing alt tags on images is.

This may seem a little overwhelming, but don’t worry… if you are using a modern CMS then it will most likely have  a very easy method of inserting ALT tags for your images that you can manage without any specific technical knowledge, provided you understand what the ALT tag is and what information is supposed to be entered for it.

Now, as a regular business this is not something you’ll have to worry about for quite a few years, but those managing a government office or location will be required to have accessible websites in just a few short years.  This can be an issue in that case, especially if you’re in the process of (or will shortly be in the process of) building a new website. Typically you would hope to get more than a few years of millage out of a website… so what can be done to protect your investment in a site now?

First off, it is important to note that the AODA information and communications standard (which will govern website and other communications requirements)  has not been finalized yet, but we can be reasonably confident that the standard for websites is going to be WCAG 2.0 Level A compliance.  It’s logical to assume that when the standard is finalized, existing websites will not have to be brought up to speed immediately or if they are there will be government funding to help organizations achieve this goal. However, it’s probably not a good idea to count on that being the case, because it’s still uncertain until the standard is formalized.

Making your website accessible does add legwork to the project, but most of the legwork should be done by the web provider you’ve selected and not your organization, and there is certainly value to ensuring your website is accessible to a wider audience.  There are two main points you’ll want to ensure for accessibility when developing your new website:

1. Ensure your web provider is building a site that will be at least WCAG 2.0 compliant.

If you don’t already have a good working relationship with your selected provider, ensure that they are contractually obligated to provide WCAG 2.0 compliance or greater. Knowing the Web Design industry, I am positive that there will be web providers out there that will try to capitalize on the new focus on accessibility and promise their customers they are delivering accessible websites, but won’t actually go through the process of ensuring accessibility, banking on the fact that by the time the standard comes into law, the website will be done and they will be long gone.

2. Ensure that you are trained on creating WCAG 2.0 compliant content.

Very few sites sold today don’t have a content management system (or CMS for short). If you’re unfamiliar, a CMS essentially lets you edit and add content to your website without technical knowledge or ability.  Since you will be adding and editing content to your website after it launches, it is extremely important that the CMS your provider is supplying actually supports the creation of accessible content, but also that the training supplied by your provider goes beyond just using the CMS to edit your website, and includes training of  your staff on the steps and processes you will need to go through internally when adding or editing content to ensure that your website remains accessible.

I  hope you found this brief overview of the AODA and how it will apply to your websites in the future helpful; in the next article we’ll be talking about the requirements a website must meet to be WCAG compliant.