Accessibility for the Web

Over the past few months, the website team has been working towards accessibility remediation for cda.org , which means ensuring that we are providing a good user experience for members and other users with disabilities, as well as anyone navigating the website using assistive technologies. In addition to the importance of supporting our members in this way, website accessibility is also a legal requirement.

What this means for you:

There will be changes to content on the website, including images, documents that have been uploaded to the site, and regular webpage text. We are in the process of auditing pages sitewide and you may be contacted by someone on the website team to provide input or review larger changes.
Updates made to the site that do not meet accessibility guidelines will need to be either taken down or fixed as soon as possible.

Content areas to note:

Creating a correct heading structure in articles/resources. Bold paragraphs shouldn't be used in place of an actual heading tag (h2, h3, etc.) since they don't convey the same semantic meaning.
Moving away from uploading articles (like press releases) simply as PDFs — especially flattened PDFs. Having the content as a text-based article provides a better user experience, especially on mobile, and is more accessible. Flattened PDFs are 100% not accessible by anyone using assistive technology. It's a big image essentially. A screen reader would be unable to read these entire documents.
Images/visual elements need to work with assistive technologies therefore require alt-text descriptions. Images must also have proper contrast and be responsive across devices.

Resources to Understand ADA Requirements

Accessibility for the Web

Resources to Understand ADA Requirements

Standards and Overview

Creating Accessible PDFs

Accessibility for MS Word

Training Opportunities