Web Content Accessibility
Making your digital content accessible to all potential users means putting in place tools and features to make web content available to people with disabilities. For instance, a user who is Deaf or hard of hearing may make use of text transcripts of audio or video recordings. A user who is blind or visually impaired may rely on a screen reader to access websites.
Web accessibility is a complex issue. A few core features you can implement to improve the accessibility of digitized archival materials and historical resources are described below.
Photographs, postcards, and other visual images:
- Provide concise and meaningful text descriptions of all visual items. You can put these descriptions in a “Description” field in your metadata. Or, for images included on a web page, put the description in the alt attribute (alternative text) within the HTML <img> element.
- If there is text in an image that is important for understanding the meaning of the image, like writing on a storefront or a photographer’s handwritten title, transcribe that information and include it in the description.
Book pages, articles, letters, diaries, and other texts:
- Use OCR software to generate a searchable transcript of any printed text. OCR may be a feature of your CMS or your scanning software, or you can use a program such as Adobe Acrobat.
- Create a searchable transcript of any handwritten text in a text file or pdf.
- When creating new digital documents, such as a handout or meeting agenda, use properly nested headings to create an outline of the content. Add bullets or numbers to any items in a list, and if using tables, make sure row and column headers are clearly labeled.
Oral history interviews, performances, or other recorded sound, video, or film:
- Provide transcripts of audio recordings. Transcriptions may be auto-generated using speech-to-text recognition software, created by volunteers, crowdsourced, or outsourced to a vendor.
- Provide captions for video content. Include text-based descriptions of non-audio content as well as captions for spoken words.
Recollection Wisconsin has created a Toolkit for Transcription Tips with more information.
Resources and Tools
- Digital Library Accessibility and Usability Guidelines (DLAUG) to Support Blind and Visually Impaired Users. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
- Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. WebAIM at Utah State University.
- Verbal Description Training. Art Beyond Sight Museum Education Institute.
- Guidelines for Audio Describers. The Audio Description Project, 2003.
- Accessibility Best Practices. City University of New York.
- Edit or Remove Captions in YouTube. Google, 2022. Add punctuation and capital letters to the automatic captions to denote sentences and pauses.
- Transcription Tips. National Archives, 2019.
The Digital Readiness Toolkit and related resources were made possible in part by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
