Digital Accessibility Guidelines
Creating Inclusive Online Experiences
State of North Carolina websites must be accessible to everybody including people who rely on assistive technologies, such as screen readers, to browse the Internet. Providing equal access to digital content and creating inclusive online experiences for all people, regardless of their ability, is the right thing to do, and it makes a lot of business sense.
Authoring Accessible Content
Website editors should make their content accessible to everyone. That includes users who have visual, auditory, neurological, cognitive, and physical disabilities.
Accessibility tips for content stress writing clearly and concisely. Site owners should also use the formatting toolbar and provide text alternatives.
- Users skim pages. Like it or not, most users skim pages by the headings and link titles. Being able to understand and navigate a page based on its structure is critically important for people with visual, reading, and attention disabilities.
- Correct formatting matters. Screen readers navigate content based upon how the text is tagged, not how it looks. Logical heading order and unordered lists are meaningful. Selecting a header out of order because of size preference is not meaningful.
- Text alternatives are critical. People who are blind rely on alt text for images and icons. Video and audio captions and transcripts are needed by people who are deaf, hard of hearing, new to a language, or in a place where a device should be muted.
Automatic Accessibility Checker
To help improve usability across state agency websites, Digital Commons provides the Editoria11y accessibility checker. The accessibility checker highlights potential issues for content creators, indicates their severity, explains why they can be problematic, and offers advice on how to fix them.