What is Digital Accessibility?
Digital Accessibility is creating content for online and mobile use that is accessible for users with diverse needs.
Why is Digital Accessibility Important?
1 in 4 adults in Illinois have a disability. Creating content that is digitally accessible provides persons with a disability to have equitable access to information. This equal access allows individuals to participate in learning and enrichment opportunities across our campus community.
Supports all learners: Ensures students, faculty, and staff using screen readers, captions, or keyboard navigation can access course materials, campus services, and enrollment tools without barriers.
Improves usability for everyone: Simple designs, readable fonts, and video captions benefit the entire university—including anyone studying in a quiet library, viewing a phone screen in bright sunlight, or recovering from a temporary injury.
Legal and Policy Compliance: Accessible content creation is a collective requirement that ensures institutional compliance with ADA Title II, the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA), and the UIS Digital Accessibility Policy.
Getting Started with Digital Accessibility
Digital accessibility begins during the initial authoring phase. The STARS Framework provides a practical checklist for building accessible documents, slide decks, and web pages.
Stars Framework
Design Accessible content with STARS
S - Structure and Headings
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- Title & Hierarchy: Start document titles with a Heading 1 and maintain a sequential heading hierarchy (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3) without skipping levels.
- Lists: Use native, built-in bulleted or numbered list tools rather than manually typed dashes or symbols.
T - Text, Fonts, and Spacing
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- Font Type: Author with accessible sans-serif fonts (e.g. Arial, Calbri, Helvetica).
- Font Size and Spacing: Use an 11 pt or larger font size, set appropriate line spacing, and remove blank line breaks or extra paragraph spaces used for visual formatting.
A - Alternative Text
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- Image Descriptions: Provide a concise description for images, charts, and diagrams that explains the purpose of the visual.
- Decorative Content: Mark non-informative or background visuals as decorative so screen readers ignore them.
R -Readability and Hyperlinks
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- Descriptive Links: Use a descriptive text that describes the purpose and destination (e.g. Office of Digital Accessibility) instead of the complete web address or “click here”.
- Contrast & Verification: Maintain strong color contrast between text and background, and verify all linked resources are available and accessible
S - Saving and Validation
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- Verify Accessibility: Use a built in or third-party accessibility checker.
- Document Metadata: Add a descriptive document title document title and specify the primary language in the file properties before saving
- Save as PDF: Select Save As, choose PDF, and click Options to ensure Document structure tags for accessibility are checked before saving.
Accessibility Resources
Resource type