When we approach content for the website, we start from a place of “what is the story, and how can we best show it?” We can’t just say we have a nursing program, or a thriving campus life, or graduates that are changing the world. We have to make our users feel it through the stories that showcase everything that Rockhurst is and will be.
Web Accessibility
As we ensure our physical campus space is accessible for all individuals, reasonably accommodating people with disabilities so they can easily use every space on campus, we must also provide the same access to our website.
The Office of Civil Rights oversees that organizations consistently met web accessibility standards as defined by WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. Below is a very brief overview of the web accessibility standards we actively monitor and enact on the rockhurst.edu site, but we encourage Rockhurst web content managers to review the full text on the WCAG website linked above for more information.
Color Contrast
As different colors are layered on a webpage, we must meet a minimum level of color contrast, so the two items are distinguishable from one another and readable/viewable by those with a sight or color disability The minimum color contrast should calculate to 4.5:1.
Things to Avoid
Never upload an image with copy on it. Without meticulously creating the proper image and alt text, this will violate the standards. The best route is to upload a plain image and provide the connected text elsewhere on the site.
Don’t upload PDFs unless it is absolutely necessary (and it will be rare that it’s necessary). It is extremely difficult to properly format a PDF to be web accessible, and most of the time, a PDF was not created with a web experience in mind. In other words, best practice would be to take the content included on a PDF and “translate” it into a web experience.