Web Accessibility
The University of British Columbia is committed to making its websites usable by people of all abilities.
There are various estimates available, but studies show that about 20% of the population has a disability, be it visual, hearing, motor or cognitive. This doesn’t necessarily imply that this percentage of the population is unable to access the web because of these disabilities.
The WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) are the W3C recommended guidelines for web accessibility. There are three levels of compliance with the WCAG 2.0 – A, AA and AAA – and they each have a set of requirements that need to be fulfilled.
The CLF default colors (brand identity header, brand identity footer, UI elements and components) are AAA compliant and continuous improvements are being made to ensure WCAG 2.0 AA compliance throughout.
WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite) assistive technology landmarks are also embedded in the main content areas: search, navigation, main content area, complementary content areas and the footer. These role tags make it easier for users to jump to or identify these main sections of content and they represent a considerable improvement from the ‘skip to main content’ links that were used prior to WAI-ARIA.
If you are fully customizing your website’s content areas, please ensure that you include, at least, the main ARIA landmark role tags that are used in the CLF 7.0 templates:
<form class="form-search" method="get" action="https://www.ubc.ca/search/" role="search">
…
<header id="ubc7-header" class="row-fluid expand" role="banner">
…
<div id="ubc7-unit-menu" class="navbar expand" role="navigation">
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<div id="content" class="expand row-fluid content" role="main">
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<aside class="span4" role="complementary">
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<footer id="ubc7-footer" role="contentinfo">
…
Quick Tips for Web Designers
Source: WebAIM