Accessibility Checklist

It is legal requirement that the MSD website adheres to accessibility regulations. Anyone who edits the site has a responsibility to ensure their content is accessible.

If you have any questions please refer to the accessibility information and resources on the Accessibility Training and Support pages on the MSD website or contact communications@medsci.ox.ac.uk.

1. Have you added a new page?

The page title must be:

• Unique to the site.
• Descriptive indicating the purpose of the page.

The page structure must be:

• Logical and consistent with other pages on the website. For example, don’t disable the left-hand navigation and then use a portlet to rebuild it on the right.
• When using a keyboard to navigate a page, the page structure must be logical.

See the Page structure, titles and headings page for further information.

Follow the checklist below for other actions you may have completed on your new page.

2. Have you added an image?

You must: Add Alt (Alternative) Text or mark the image as decorative.

• Assess if the image provides information or is decorative. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative describes decorative images as not adding information to the content of a page.  For example, the information provided by the image might already be given using adjacent text, or the image might be included to make the website more visually attractive.
• If the image provides information add alt text. For information about how to write alt text and add it to the MSD website see the Images & images containing text page.
• If the image is decorative you do not need alt text but you must indicate in the Haiku Content Management System (CMS) that the image is decorative. To mark the image as decorative open the image in the website’s image library, select Edit in the toolbar and select the Decorative image? check box.

You should not: add images which contain text, unless it is a logo. If it is unavoidable you need to provide a text equivalent of the image text. This also applies to infographics, charts, graphs and posters. See the Images & images containing text page for further details. 

3. Have you created a link?

You must:

• Ensure that links are meaningful out of context and make sense without reading surrounding text.
• Not use link text such as ‘Click here’, ‘Read more’ or ‘Find out more’
• Embed links within text, not typed in full. For example, ‘To find out more visit https://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/accessibility’ should be ‘To find out more read our Accessibility Statement’.
• External links should always open in the same window.

See the Links & Tables page on the MSD website for further information.

4. Have you created a heading?

Using headings and sub-headings to break page content into short manageable sections improves accessibility and engagement.

Headings must be:

• Hierarchical as this hierarchy informs assistive technology about the structure of the page. In the Haiku CMS text editor use Heading Main before using Heading Sub to create hierarchical headings.
• Informative and meaningful.
• In either sentence case or title case and the chosen format should be used consistently throughout. 

Headings must not be:

• Used for items that aren’t headings, e.g. to draw attention to a line of text.
• Created using bold rather than a heading style. 

See the Page structure, titles and heading page for further information on headings.

5. Have you added text to a page?

You must consider the page layout. For example:

• The page structure should be logical and consistent with other pages on the website. For example, don’t disable the left-hand navigation and then use a portlet to rebuild it on the right.
• Put the most important content first as many people don’t read to the end of a webpage.
• Use headings to break the content into short, manageable and easy-to-read sections. The paragraph and heading functionality has accessibility compliant space built-in.
• If possible break up content with bullet points. Only use only use bullet points for lists, not to draw attention to a single sentence or link.
• Do not use negative space to create space between paragraphs. If you need to create extra space you should consider breaking the text into sections with headings.
• Use plain English, keep sentences short and don’t use jargon.

6. Have you added a document?

Try to avoid adding documents to the website; you should convert them to a webpage instead. If this isn’t possible you must follow the guidance on Accessible documents on the MSD website.