Accessibility Standards for Digital Content

According to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, any electronic information or technology developed, purchased, maintained, or used by Butler University must provide equitable access and use for individuals with disabilities. The access and use must be comparable to that provided to individuals without disabilities.

Universal Design, or Inclusive Design, is the design and creation of environments both physical and digital that can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, physical stature, preferences, disability or ability. It should be a fundamental goal to design environments that meet the needs of all people. Incorporating the needs of all people results in spaces, products, and service that are useful, beneficial and enjoyable for all.

Developing your electronic materials using Universal Design principles is easy and, simply, good design.

• When using hyperlinks, make sure it is descriptive of the content to which it links.
• Do not use color as a means of conveying essential information.
• Use a high contrast between background colors and text colors.
• Avoid flashing images. These may cause seizures for students with photosensitive epilepsy and may be distracting for students with learning disabilities.
• Use accessible third-party materials for required coursework or provide an accessible, equitable alternative. Contact the Center for Academic Technology with questions or for further direction as needed.
• Provide a transcript for spoken content and music with lyrics in the video. Include visual description of images that provide content.
• Close caption (or subtitle) all spoken content and music with lyrics.

• Provide alternative text for images that convey content. Visually describe the image as thoroughly as possible.
• Decorative images do not require long descriptions and should be “nulled” or left untagged as an image.

• Close caption (or subtitle) all spoken content and music with lyrics.
• Provide a transcript for spoken content and music with lyrics in the video. Include visual description of images that provide content (i.e., not decorative).
• Edit out or post a warning at the beginning of the video if it contains flickers or blinks at any time.

View the Butler Process for Video Captioning.