Digital Accessibility and DCU.ie

Legislation in the area of digital accessibility was introduced in Ireland in 2020, and applies to all Irish public sector websites and apps - you can read more about the EU Web Accessibility Directive here.

The National Disability Authority has been tasked with monitoring compliance across the Irish public sector - and DCU was first brought into this review process in May 2022. Similarly to all public sector websites, this monitoring is ongoing to ensure our compliance to the legislation.

We have an accessibility statement on our website - which is mandatory under the legislation - and it can be accessed here.

Our unit organises seminars on digital accessibility which content editors can attend. We will let staff know when this seminar is taking place closer to the time.

Below are some basic tips on digital accessibility best practices.

If you have any questions about this, please don't hesitate to contact us on socialmedia@dcu.ie

Avoid solely using ‘click here’, ‘read more’ and ‘learn more’:

When calling the user to action, use brief but meaningful link text that:

provides some information when read out of context
explains what the link offers
As well as becoming accessible, this is common practice to increase a websites search engine optimisation

Recycling or remove old pages/content

If multiple pages link the same page, consider having a central page for this content. If you need to keep old content, then move this and rename into something obvious, eg:

/current-report

/report-2021

/report-2020

the following year, the pages will read as follows:

/current-report (new content)

/report-2022 (renamed from /current-report)

/report-2021 (remains the same)

Any links will always go to the more recent content /current-report

Caption Images

Alternative (Alt) Text is meant to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. It is read aloud to users by screen reader software, and it is indexed by search engines. It also displays on the page if the image fails to load.

Writing Good Alt Text

Add alt text to all images
Keep it short and descriptive, like a tweet
Don’t include “image of” or “photo of”

Structure

Use heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc) properly:

H1 tags are used to denote the most important text, such as the main theme or title of a content.
H2 and H3 tags are commonly used as subheadings.
Finally, H4, H5, and H6 tags may be used to provide further structure within those subsections.

Replace PDFs with HTML

Ever tried to navigate a PDF on your mobile?

They’re not responsive
They’re not designed to be read on-screen
They can be difficult to navigate, especially for users with accessibility needs
It’s tricky to change their colour schemes and text size, which some users with visual impairments need to do
They’re harder to maintain, and so easily become out of date

What can I do instead?

Create HTML page (web page) using Drupal using the content from the PDF, it’s easier than you think:

HR Staff Survey: /hr/staff-engagement-diversity-inclusion-survey

CTYI Report: /ctyi/irish-gifted-students-self-social-and-academic-explorations

Replace Word Doc Forms / Google Forms with Drupal webforms

In terms of forms, we are looking to see if we can embed these as much as possible in Drupal. Google forms will not work due to issues and concerns around GDPR
Generally speaking, Word Docs are not responsive
Data from a Drupal webform is safe under GDPR, as stored within the Drupal system
Easier to navigate a webform using a keyboard only compared to a Word Doc
Switching from a downloadable Word Doc to a webform cuts down on printing cost and paper
Easier to make mistake on Google forms than Drupal