Accessibility

The University of Pennsylvania website is frequented by a diverse group of people from around the globe. Some of our users have visual or motor skill impairments and utilize assistive technologies such as screen readers and text-only browsers; others view our pages using outmoded technologies and slow connection speeds. As such, it is important that web developers and content providers be cognizant of these limitations and strive to make their pages accessible to the greatest number of people possible.

The accompanying page templates, and the central University web pages on which they are based, have been constructed to meet level one of the WC3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It is recommended that developers and content providers familiarize themselves with these standards and work to maintain at least this level of accessibility.

More information on web accessibility is available at:

• World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) Web Accessibility Iniative: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• Web AIM (Accessibility In Mind): Introduction to Web Accessibility- http://www.webaim.org/intro/
• WC3 Resources: http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/
• WC3: http://www.w3.org
• Web Standards Project - http://www.webstandards.org/
• Web Usability: http://www.usability.com.au/index.cfm

Some useful tools for developing accessible pages are:

• W3 Schools: http://www.w3schools.com/quality/quality_accessibility.asp
• Watchfire WebXACT (page validation tool): http://webxact.watchfire.com/
• Lynx (text-only web browser): http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html