Frequently, the biggest barriers to accessibility come from content created in the past, without accessibility principles in mind. Some past content may still be relevant and need brought into compliance, but a lot of past content may be redundant or inaccurate now. Eliminating unnecessary, outdated PDFs and websites offers many benefits to the University and its community.
- Improves accessibility for all faculty, staff, and students
- Reduces confusion and improves search engine optimization (SEO) by eliminating duplicate webpages/documents
- Lowers costs by reducing the amount of web domains and cloud storage
Auditing your past content for accessibility is a big, but essential, task. However, the first content audit will always be the most time-consuming. Afterward, regular content auditing in combination with implementing accessibility practices into creative workflows creates accessible information that requires very little maintenance down the line.
Follow the “Three Es” process below to start auditing your content. Remember to check out the Accessible Content Design Hub as well to bake accessibility into your processes now and allow for easier auditing in the future.
- Explore
The first step to an audit is to explore all of your content. This means everything. All past and current websites, all documents housed on websites or an intranet, all software, and all courses/trainings should be included and assessed.
SiteImprove can help you to identify all documents that are housed on your website, all pages, and any broken links. All can be found in the site “Inventory” under “Quality Assurance.”
Make a list of all your electronic and information technology (EIT) so that you can be sure to assess each item. If you’re having trouble identifying items, think about essential processes that your faculty, staff, students, or users must follow. What websites do they need to navigate to complete this essential task? What documents do they need to reference, download, or fill out? Write down each item that is involved.
- Evaluate
Next, you should evaluate your content for its need, accessibility, and prioritization. The EIT Accessibility Policy outlines two main prioritizations for defining your EIT – fundamental and secondary. Evaluate your list of content made in the Explore phase and determine if each item is fundamental or secondary. Items which are fundamental should be prioritized first in terms of auditing and in terms of making accessible. At the same time, you can mark any items that are not needed for deletion. Outdated documents and old websites may fall into this category.
Then, for fundamental items, evaluate their accessibility and eliminate any existing duplicate webpages or documents. If both a webpage and a document provide the same information, a webpage is the preferred format because it is generally easier to make accessible and keep updated.
- For any documents, use the built-in checkers to determine basic accessibility. Use the Microsoft accessibility checker for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files and the Adobe Acrobat Pro accessibility checker for PDFs.
- SiteImprove should be used to assess the accessibility of websites.
- Ask software vendors for a VPAT or ACR (an accessibility assessment of their program) and review the results. If a license renewal is upcoming, consider if more accessible options might be available.
- Use UDOIT to scan Canvas courses for accessibility.
Take note of what needs improvement and prioritize those items that need the most remediation. After this analysis of fundamental EIT, you should do the same with your secondary EIT.
- Evolve
The last step in the content audit process is to evolve your content into its most accessible version. You can learn how to fix any present accessibility issues in Pitt-made content by selecting your specific format from the Accessible Content Design Hub. Beyond fixing basic accessibility issues, though, evolving your content should be about optimizing processes and information for all students, faculty, and staff. Eliminate excessive steps and make the instructions clear for everyone. Remember, both disabled and non-disabled people benefit from accessible design.
If you come across any accessibility issues that you cannot determine how to solve, please reach out to accessibility@pitt.edu for help.