Web Accessibility Statement

universal design = universal accessibility

California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) seeks to provide universal access to official pages on its Web site through compliance with Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998, and the international World-Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The advantages of universal Web accessibility go beyond legal requirements and the usefulness of a Web site to people with disabilities. Applying universal design concepts to a Web site make it accessible to all site visitors, including those visiting with graphics turned off or with mobile devices. Further, universal design concepts ordinarily lead to clean code and enhanced cross-browser compatibility. CSUDH seeks to provide universal access to official pages on its Web site and encourages compliance to standards by unofficial pages residing on its Web server.

Steps to Universal Design

Making Web pages accessible for many disabilities is accomplished by designing pages that allow the effective use of adaptive technologies to access their content. These technologies include:

• Screen reading software, benefiting persons having low or no vision;
• Text enlargers, benefiting persons with low vision;
• Alternative input devices, benefiting persons with limited mobility;
• Voice recognition software, benefiting persons with limited mobility and/or cognitive disabilities;
• Transcriptions, benefiting persons with hearing disabilities;
• Video captions, benefiting persons with hearing disabilities.

Some universal design is not related to adaptive technologies. For example, the use of simple, straight-forward language on a Web site assists all site visitors, including persons for whom English is not the first language and persons with cognitive disabilities. Flickering images on Web sites can trigger seizures in some site visitors. When color is used to distinguish between choices on a Web page, color-blind viewers may find the choices inaccessible.

The 16 properties of universal design are listed in the U.S. Government's Section 508, § 1194.22. Following the rules will yield Web pages that are almost universally accessible.

In addition to Section 508’s 16 rules, designers of official CSUDH Web pages should:

• Include the following statement on the top level page of an official Web site:
  • CSUDH is committed to universal accessibility for official pages of its Web site. We welcome any ideas or comments from our clients that may help us to further improve upon the accessibility and usability of our Web site. Contact access@csudh.edu.

• Before publishing, validate the Web page’s universal accessibility with the following tools:
  • W3C Markup Validation Service;
  • WAVE is developed and made available as a free community service by WebAIM. WAVE allows users to select certain guidelines and standards filters in the Details panel, including Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
  • Cynthia Says helps users identify errors in their Web content related to Section 508 standards and/or the WCAG guidelines for Web accessibility. Cynthia Says allows users to test individual pages on their website and provides feedback in a reporting format that is clear and easy to understand.