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Accessibility standards

In its broadest definition, "web accessibility" is an approach to web design that aims to include the widest number of people and user agents as possible. Commonly, when people speak of web accessibility they are referring to access for disabled user groups.

Policy and legislation

The university has a legal obligation under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 to develop and maintain accessible web pages. Our websites are required to comply with the accessibility standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These standards are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Three priority levels for accessibility on the web

WCAG1.0 contains a number of checkpoints. These checkpoints are grouped into the following priority levels:

  • Priority 1 checkpoints are "must dos". If these requirements are not met, websites will present significant barriers to some users.
  • Priority 2 checkpoints are "should dos". If these requirements are met, barriers to access will be significantly reduced.
  • Priority 3 checkpoints are "may dos". Meeting these checkpoints will further enhance accessibility.

Standards for Monash websites

All Monash websites must meet all of the priority 1 checkpoints. In addition, all priority 2 checkpoints should also be met, except for checkpoint 3.3 that requires layout to be handled by stylesheets. Stylesheets cannot be used for layout because of the difficulties with stylesheet implementation across different browsers.

The Monash web templates have been authored to achieve compliance with these standards. They also meet some of the checkpoints listed as priority 3 requirements in WCAG.

See also

Other areas in the Web Style Guide that deal with accessibility issues.

Resources