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Accessibility

The accessibility of State of Hawaii websites is of paramount importance in serving all citizens in an increasingly digital environment. Creating accessible digital content is everyone’s responsibility, and there are many tasks that you, as a website editor, must be aware of when creating and publishing content online.

Key areas include:

Adding proper alt text to images
Using headings properly for structure and organization
Creating accessible PDFs
Using captions and transcripts on videos
Using descriptive titles for links, never ‘click here’
Using colors carefully and ensuring the contrast meets requirements
Never using color alone to convey information (eg: click the red button to proceed)
Not using tables for layouts. Use them for tabular data only
Using tools like Siteimprove regularly to check your compliance

The list above is NOT all inclusive. The State of Hawaii strives to meet the WCAG 2.0 Level AA standard and the Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite (W A I-ARIA) 1.0 techniques. Full guidelines can be found at each link.

Testing Tools

The State of Hawaii uses a tool called Siteimprove to regularly crawl your website in order to detect issues that affect content quality, accessibility, and more.
If you don’t have login access to the Siteimprove platform, you can also use the Siteimprove Chrome extension to test any web page for accessibility issues with immediate results.
You may use the following form to request prompt assistance with accessing any content on websites managed by ETS staff at ets.hawaii.gov/contact.

Resources

The following are several external resources and tools available to web managers to assist them in meeting accessibility requirements.