Section 508 Compliance/Accessibility: Creating Digital and Electronic Compliant Documents

Document Headings convey the hierarchical content structure of a document. Web browsers, plug-ins, and assistive technologies will use them to provide in-page navigation.

• Nest headings by their rank (or level). The most important heading has the rank 1 (h1), the least important heading rank 6 (h6). Headings with an equal or higher rank start a new section, headings with a lower rank start new subsections that are part of the higher ranked section.
• Skipping heading ranks can be confusing and should be avoided where possible: Make sure that a h2 is not followed directly by an h4, for example. It is ok to skip ranks when closing subsections, for instance, a h2 beginning a new section, can follow an <h4> as it closes the previous section.

Document Lists also convey a hierarchical content structure. 

Visit WebAim and/or W3C Web Accessibility Initiative for additional structure information.

Images must have text alternatives that describe the information or function represented by them. This ensures that images can be used by people with various disabilities.

Consider reading a document with images to a person over the phone. One would not describe a picture that represents the text as simply “a picture” but rather “a picture of a sunny field of daffodils with butterflies and bees flying around.”

The appropriate text alternatives are based on the purpose of the image. While most images fall into the Decorative, Informative, and/or functional, there are others:

• Decorative – a selection of Decorative is warranted but no identity is required.
• Informative – images that graphically represent concepts as noted above.
• Functional – the text alternative to functions such as a link or button.
• Images of Text - readable text is sometimes presented within an image. These should be avoided but if required the Alt Text should be exactly as the image text.

Visit WebAim and/or W3C Web Accessibility Initiative for additional information.

Hyperlinks are the navigational features of most websites, letting people easily move from one location to another with one click.

Users with assisted technology should be able to effortlessly navigate weblinks that are clearly identified with the destination intent.

Simply adding a copied hyperlink from a web URL to a document or merely noting to “click here” will not provide adequate information for accessibility users.

Noted below are the correct (Destination Identified) and incorrect (copied URL or Click Here) way to identify weblinks for accessibility:

• Correct way to provide a hyperlink provides a explicit destination term. Please visit the WebAim Links and Hypertext page for additional information.
• Incorrect way to provide a hyperlink is to copy a URL or designate another action like "Click Here." Please visit “https://webaim.org/techniques/hypertext/ OR Click Here” for additional information. 

Printed documents with Descriptive Hyperlinks pose an obstacle to sighted users. Endnotes are a preferred way to provide the actual URL to sighted users in printed format. 

Despite being standard markup for tables for many years, some screen readers still do not fully support complex tables with spanned or multiple levels of row and/or column headers. When possible, try to 'flatten' the table and avoid spanned cells and multiple levels of header cells.