University of Missouri

Web standards

Mizzou web accessibility standards (PDF)
Sept. 20, 2016

Summary

These standards are collected to bring together industry guidelines1 and federal law2 in a way that is easily understood and implemented by web developers and those managing content on the web at Mizzou.

These standards reflect current industry best practices and guidelines. As technologies and user needs change, these standards must be updated to reflect changes.

The standards are not meant to be included in the Business Policy and Procedure Manual. These standards are meant to be a living addendum to the Digital Accessibility Policy, which is an extension of the Accessibility Policy3.

Scope

This set of standards ONLY reflects content made available on the Web. This includes:

  • Websites and webpages coded primarily in HTML and CSS.
  • Web applications published to the web and available through an Internet browser.

These standards do NOT cover:

  • Downloadable mobile applications.
  • Digital files downloaded from websites or from web applications

Keywords

The standards make use of keywords4 to help developers and content managers understand what is required of them. The most important of them being:

  • MUST and MUST NOT. These keywords mean the standard is mandatory or prohibited, respectively.
  • SHOULD and SHOULD NOT. These keywords mean every effort should be made to adhere to the standard but there may be circumstances where it is not possible or feasible to do so.

In the future, best practices, recommendations, resources and further information will be provided in order to augment the standards from a list of requirements to more of an educational document.

Authors

The standards were produced through a collaborative effort of the Web Standards Subcommittee, Accessibility Working Group. Members included:

Web Subcommittee representation

  • Jason Rollins, (chair)
  • Paul Gilzow
  • Shahn Hogan
  • Genevieve Howard

Campus Accessibility experts

  • Amber Cheek
    Disability Inclusion and ADA Compliance Manager
  • Barb Hammer
    Director, Disability Center
  • Cate Cooper
    Access Advisor, Disability Center
  • Abigail O’Sullivan
    Manager, Adaptive Computing
  • Carmen Schafer
    Adaptive Computing Center
  • Laura Foley
    Instructional Designer, Nursing