October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), which recognizes the contributions of workers with disabilities and highlights inclusive employment policies and practices that benefit employers and employees. This month, let’s reaffirm our commitment to accessibility in digital spaces.
Maintaining an accessible digital footprint allows everyone to engage with your content. Thankfully, the Stanford Office of Digital Accessibility has many resources to help you ensure your web content is accessible for all.
Accessibility topics
Engage and learn what steps you can take to improve digital accessibility throughout October in support of NDEAM:
Accessibility quick checks
Unsure if your website is accessible? Check out the Accessibility Evaluation Quick Checks document to determine if your electronic content is minimally accessible or can be made accessible. Contact the Office of Digital Accessibility if you have questions about your evaluation results or to request a detailed accessibility evaluation.
Siteimprove
Siteimprove is an accessibility and quality assurance platform that monitors public-facing websites for accessibility errors. Every few days, Siteimprove scans your site for potential accessibility issues and guides developers and content authors toward best practices to resolve these errors. Siteimprove has over 100 tests for websites and digital documents and is free for the Stanford community. To get started, submit a request to add, remove, or access your websites in Stanford's Siteimprove account.
Keyboard accessibility
Keyboard accessibility is fundamental to creating an inclusive digital environment, fostering autonomy, and enabling website interactivity for people with disabilities. Users should be able to control all interactive elements on a webpage using only their keyboard. Learn more about keyboard accessibility on the Keyboard webpage.
Accessible PDFs
Ensure your PDF documents are accessible. Check out the Accessibility Training Modules for guidance in creating accessible PDF documents, or use Equidox to modify existing PDFs into more accessible versions.
Don’t have time to do it yourself? Explore various remediation vendors who can help convert your digital files into accessible documents, including PDFs.
Additional resources
- Explore the Office of Digital Accessibility website.
- Digital content guides: Have a presentation planned? Creating modules in Canvas? Follow step-by-step guides for common software applications to improve the accessibility of your digital content and engage with diverse audiences.
- Concepts breakdowns: Unsure how to write effective alternative text? Need help captioning video content? Get well-versed in accessibility best practices to improve content clarity and accessibility.
- Office hours: Have questions? Need your website content evaluated for accessibility? Sign up for accessibility office hours to answer questions, conduct evaluations, and more.
