York University is committed to principles of respect, inclusion and equality of all persons with disabilities across campus. The Accessibility For Ontarians With Disabilities Act (AODA) issued by the Ontario government aims to make Ontario fully accessible to persons with disabilities by 2025.
A key component of York’s AODA compliance is for community members to follow design standards to ensure the experience for someone with a disability as someone without. To design for accessibility means to effectively communicate to people of varying abilities and impairments. Considerations need to be made for all media, from printed posters to social media posts and even environmental designs.
Fundamentals of Design:
- Sensory (eyesight; hearing; cognitive; semantically structured information)
- Language Usage (cognitive load-short and literal; avoid jargon; scannable; semantically structured text)
- Colour (contrast is affective by hue, saturation and tonal value) Sample for Faculty & Sample for Main York
- Text (size; tracking; line, paragraph and column spacing; line length, column length, justification, glyphs)
- Digital Media (assistive technology compatibility; semantic structure; non-text content
- Alt Text (function; length; redundancy; unnecessary words (ig. image of, picture of); close tag (period)
- Video (captioning; transcripts; background sounds)
- Physical Media (eg. sign design, can the user read it/access to a digital device or do they have to rely on another person? Are you creating signage that has regulations set by the Government of Ontario? eg. elevator or stairs, room identification, etc.)
In addition, there are many components of AODA website compliance that need to put in place on York’s many websites created or updated after 2012 by January 2021. Although the York’s 2020 template has been created with AODA compliance in mind, there are still actions that are required to take place in order to avoid fines to the university.
Principals of Web Design:
- Web content accessibility guidelines for WCAG 2.1 w3.org/tr/wcag21/ as well as Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM) webaim.org and W3c Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org/wai
- Present text in a perceivable way (semantic text, no content should be delivered through sound or visuals alone)
- User should feel in control and be able to operate the interface regardless of abilities
- Information needs to be understood by people with different cognitive abilities, with diverse education, linguistic and cultural differences
- Consider wide range of displays, browsers, devices and assistive technologies a user may rely on
Website Resources
Within York’s Web Accessibility Hub you will find valuable tools and resources such as: Web Accessibility Guidelines, Web Editor/Owner Responsibilities, and an Evaluation Checklist.