This Guide includes 6 tips on creating ADA Compliant Guides. They are simple to do and allow people dependent on screen readers to have a much better experience using the Guide.
H-tags (header tags): Screen Readers can be set to read just the H-tags. This provides a really nice outline of the page. Sighted people see an outline at a glance -because they see the page layout. Imagine looking at a page with no punctuation, paragraphs, highlights or other visual clues, just a jumble of words. The backend of the pages in LibGuides already assign an H1 header to the page title and box titles are H2 headers. In the Rich Text editor, DO click the normal button to convert your in-box headers to an H-tag at the H3 level which is appropriate for the outline. Do not overwrite the default H3 header with H1 or H2. An H1 or H2 tag will destroy the outline hierarchy.
A-tags (linked text): Screen readers can be set to read just the linked text on the page to provide an outline of references and next steps. These can link to internal text or external text. Make the linked text meaningful: "click here" or "more about this" without any context, are not helpful links. These phrases have no useful information to guide the user. Use phrases such as "click here for more information about interlibrary loan services". For example, use text such as <a href="http://www.library.upenn.edu/lippincott/">Lippincott Library Homepage</a>. This is much more helpful than <a href="http://www.library.upenn.edu/lippincott/">library</a>.
Add brief alt text to describe images.
Go to the Image Library to select the image. Click on the picture icon to open a dialog box to add alt text.
A dialog box will open. Add the alt text in the dialog box.
