Our website sfopera.com must be in full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act in order to properly serve people with disabilities and mitigate any litigation risk from both private and governmental entities. 

A large part of reaching compliance rests on the efforts of you, the content owner. In just a few steps you can assure that your webpages are fully accessible to everyone:

1.Page Title and Description
2.Alternative Text in Images
3.Alternative Text in links
4.Fixing “Open in new Window”
5.Describing audio and video clips
6.Assuring text over images is legible
 
1.Page Title and Description
  • Every Page with a SEO tab must have a unique Title and Description
  • The Title and Description will be read out loud to blind users
  • Don’t duplicate the content, simply describe it, short is fine
a) Go to your page, click the All Properties button
b) Choose the SEO tab and fill out SEO Title and Description
 
2.Alternative Text in Images
•Images are to have an Alt Text description that briefly describes the image
•In HTML it looks like:

<img src="smiley.gif" alt="Smiley face">

•Our CMS handles Alt Text in images by various methods
•On forms, like list pages with a List Information tab
•Or blocks like the 3 column callout
•When in a WYSIWYG area, inserting an image, it’s called Image Description
 
In the Image Gallery each Image File has an Alt Text field:
 

3. Alt Text in links
•You have to describe links as well as images.
•Links are handled in various ways by the CMS
•Unlike images links use the attribute “Title”, so in html they look like:

<a href="sfopera.com/" title="Go Home">Home</a>

•The title is what shows in the cursor when you hover over a link
•In a WYSIWYG field, link dialog box
 
4. Fixing “Open in newWindow”
•Often, we have links that open a new window for the user.
•This can really mess up someone going through the site using a reader.
•In HTML it looks like:

<a href="/renew" target="_blank">Renew Now</a>

•These kind of links need to have a title=“opens new window”:

<a href="/renew" target="_blank" title=“opens new window">Renew Now</a>

•Whenever you use “Open the link in a new window”
•You must fill out the Link Title as opens new window
•Or don’t open a new window, keep it blank
 
5. Describing audio and videoclips
•Currently Audio and Video clips have no alt text, that will change
•Audio and Video clips do have descriptions, these need to be written to convey enough meaning about the content as possible
 
6. Assuring text over images is legible 
•Current guidelines ask for the visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
•Text placed over images may be difficult for some users to read where the text mask is very light and allows most of the background image to compete with the foreground text.
 
An example of text obscured by a background