Checklist: Universal usability
Publishing date: May 2002
This checklist should be used by web producers and managers to ensure that the pages presented on the Internet are as accessible and usable as possible to the largest possible audience and comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1 checkpoints for achieving W3C Web Accessibility Initiative rating ‘A’.
Basics
- Keep pages simple and easy to understand
- Presentation, content and navigation should be consistent throughout the website
- The page must comply with the WAI ‘A’ standard. Online guidelines are available from the W3C website at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
- No website or single HTML page should be developed for a particular browser
- Do not rely on colour to convey any information, review needs of colour blind users
- A consistent text navigation bar should be available at the very top of each page
- HTML must be the default standard for publishing information on the website
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [External link]
Text
- Text colour must always contrast with background colours
- Use only clear, commonly used fonts
- Avoid the use of small text
- Users should have the ability to scale fonts and change background colours within a website
Images
- All important images must have an alternative, i.e., ‘alt’ attribute and value
- All ‘alt’ attributes should be meaningful and as short as practical
Styling
- Use HTML to structure the document, not style it
- Use Cascading Style Sheets to style objects within a web page
- The website must be legible and easy to use if Cascading Style Sheets are not available to the end user
Linking alternatives
- A text alternative must be offered when an imagemap is used
- An alternative text version of any information must be offered in audio or video format
- Any information that is offered in a format that requires a plug-in must also be offered in HTML
General testing
- The website must be tested for accessibility and usability during its development
W3C HTML validation report from http://validator.w3.org
- If employing CSS then a validation is to be used from http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator
Bobby report to be obtained from http://www.cast.org/bobby
- Page Valet report obtained from http://valet.webthing.com/page/
A-Prompt off-line web accessibility verifier used http://www.aprompt.ca/
- Each HTML page should be tested against the basic browsers for usability and rendering testing (and you should test using a screen reader)
- Each page within the website must be legible when viewed with only 16 colours
- The website must be easily usable when viewed on a 800 x 600 screen size
- Individual pages must be legible when printed out on standard office/home printers
HTML validation service [External link]
CSS validation service [External link]
Bobby analysing application [External link]
Page valet validator [External link]
A-Prompt Toolkit [External link]
