Accessibility

UNF Faculty Domains is about offering faculty “the opportunity to create academic publishing spaces using modern web applications”. As a UNF faculty member diving into this initiative, you may now be considering all of the things that you want to include and link to on your web space. Your audience may include other academic colleagues, news organizations looking for expertise, students who attend UNF or are considering it, and the Internet community in general. However, you may be overlooking, certainly unintentionally, a group of visitors who literally look at your website in a completely different way.

It is estimated that over 20% of adults in the U.S. have some type of disability (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0730-us-disability.html). When it comes to viewing content on the Web, a person’s disability can manifest itself in many types of obstacles to understanding information being presented. We recommend you begin with the WebAIM organization’s introduction to accessibility to learn about web accessibility. WebAIM provides a web accessibility evaluation tool (WAVE), as well as web browser extensions (plugins) that allow you to check your site for accessibility errors, alerts, and features. WebAIM also offers Accessible Site Certification. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) also has a Web Accessibility Perspectives page that can help you “learn about the impact of accessibility and the benefits for everyone in a variety of situations.”