Vanguard University is committed to the Christian principles of love, justice and respect for all persons. Vanguard.edu seeks to provide quality content which is accessible to all. While accessibility work is an ongoing process for us, the VUSC site as a whole is measurably more compliant than a year ago with the letter and spirit of the W3C accessibility guidelines due to the interface and software upgrades which have been made. This page is designed to be used as a guideline and resource for those who create content on the VUSC institutional website.
Links to helpful accessibility tools
- Adobe PDF to HTML converter: With access.adobe.com PDF to HTML conversion by form, all you have to do is type in a URL to a PDF document into an electronic form and select the Get This PDF Document As HTML button. The PDF document will be converted on-the-fly to HTML, and will be returned to you immediately in your browser application.
- The Access Gateway: The Gateway allows you to see a document in any type size and in any colors you choose. Look at Vanguard's home page after being processed with images turned off. Once you enter the Gateway you can travel throughout the Internet using the settings you have defined. Almost all of the site uses header text tags now, so if you wish, you can use the "skip to header text" feature.
- Additional resources can be found at www.w3.org/WAI/References/.
Summary of accessibility guidelines
No columns of text are to be used, except where absolutely necessary. Text that is laid out in spreadsheet format should be clearly labeled with <THEAD> tags. One of the most difficult issues yet to be resolved with page reader software is text in columns. Invariably, when the information is presented in this format, the reader attempts to read across the columns rather than down, which jumbles the columnar text into meaningless sentences.
Style sheets are to be used for all font formatting. While we anticipate using style sheets to position text in the future, tables are currently used to maintain compatibility with older browsers. Javascript is used to determine the platform (Mac / PC / AIX / Generic) and an appropriate style sheet is loaded upon detection. If Javascript is turned off or is unsupported on the browser, the page will display properly using the style of the user's browser, which is generally the default style sheet conforming to W3C guidelines.
All tables used for formatting are to be labeled with summary tags. Because tables used solely for formatting text can be difficult for page readers to parse, every table so used should have a Summary tag. An example tag: <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" Summary="This table used for formatting purposes.">. Every table used for text formatting also should have a <TBODY> tag as a further descriptive measure. Tables should not generally be constrained to a width, so the user can determine the size of the page.
"ALT" tags are to be used on every picture and spacer image. Every picture must have either an <ALT> tag that is descriptive, or use the recommended empty quote format. An example tag: <img src="/Portals/0/spacer.gif width="1" height="1" border="0" ALT=" ">.
Alternative text links for images are available for navigation. The images used as links at the top of every page of the site are also mirrored in the footer as text, with the addition of a link to this page and other helpful portions of the site. Text links that say "click here" should not be used and links should always have content-specific text that gives more information to the user.
Header text should be used instead of <font> markup. Header text should be formatted with the header tag, not with a <font> tag that has the size increased and made bold <b> to render the text distinct. While this works visually, it is a hardship on those who use page readers and text enhancement tools. This site uses <H2> for page titles, and <H3> and/or <H4> for subheads.
Summary of design considerations
Vanguard.edu's site structure takes advantage of the strides made in information architecture in the last few years. One is never more than four clicks away from another page on the website.
The specific issues considered in website design are:
- pages which load quickly,
- a targeted navigation structure that gets visitors to their desired content faster,
- a streamlined page look that places emphasis on content, and
- increasing compliance with current accessibility standards.
Please send any questions, comments or suggestions about the site to VU's Webmaster. And thanks for stopping by!