Captions are required for videos with dialog

91¸£Àû System (UMS) requires our websites adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and their “success criterion” indicate that captions are provided for all prerecorded and live audio content in synchronized media. The intent is to enable people who are deaf or hard of hearing to watch such presentations. The Kaltura video platform provided by UMS can create these captions, as can the popular social media site Youtube. This recorded workshop from 2021 details how to edit and improve Youtube’s auto-generated captions.

Captions are increasingly used by students

The benefits of captioning your videos goes beyond adherence to these requirements, however. A recent survey found that more than half of 13-39-year-olds prefer to watch video content with captions:

• Captions help distinguish less familiar accents
• Captions allow for understanding the video without relying on the audio volume
• 59% of Gen Z and 52% of millennials use subtitles

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UMS Academy instruction on video accessibility

An updated Accessibility training will be provided when the newly envisioned UMS Academy launches in August. Meanwhile, .

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2024–25 compliance training is expected to launch in August 2024, and will include updates to the content.

New users added before Aug. 1 will be expected to complete our required Accessibility training pathway, “Designing Accessible Digital Content” within 30 days after the official relaunch.

What you should look out for

As you review your website to address old content and remove Content Blocks, it is important to look for the following situations:

• Images that do not have alt text
• Links that display the web address as the clickable link text
• Link text that is vague, or repeated use of the same link text for different links
• Images of flyers or posters

Images that do not have alt text

It is particularly important that all images used on a web page have descriptive text alternatives (alt text), as this allows visitors who use a screen reader to understand the content you are publishing. This alt text should be brief and convey the context of the image in your content. Read more about the importance of alt text.
Tip: You can quickly review your images using the “Media Library” section of the dashboard. Updating or adding alt text for each image in this location will make it available to you when you next use the image on a page.

Links that display the web address as the clickable link text

If you find a link in your content that displays the URL on screen as the clickable text, replace that address text with descriptive information about the web page the link references. For example, a link to the 91¸£Àû homepage should not display nor even umaine.edu. Instead, describe where the link will go: 91¸£Àû websiteÌý´Ç°ùÌývisit the 91¸£Àû homepage.

Link text that is vague, or repeated use of the same link text for different links

When a visitor uses a screen reader, links are read aloud in a list. Vague link text such as “PDF” or “here” are not clear to the visitor, and when a link text is used multiple times on a page it is difficult to understand which link should be selected.
Read more about accessibility with link text.

Images of flyers or posters

It is tempting to save time when putting content on your website when you have already created a flyer or poster that already features the information. Adding such an image without repeating the content as text on the web page gives a poor experience— both for visitors using screen readers as well as visitors who may be using their mobile device and its smaller screen.
Tip: Consider removing flyers or posters altogether on older content, as this may be out of date information. If the content is still important, re-type the information and format the text using the many options available in the newer Gutenberg editor.
Read more about accessibility with event flyers and posters.

2024–25 compliance training is expected to launch on Aug. 1, 2024.

New users added before August 1 will be expected to complete our required Accessibility training pathway, “Designing Accessible Digital Content” within 30 days after the official relaunch.

Once a document is ready to publish online, a good option to consider is the online file viewer Digital Communications offers via a public Sharepoint site. By using this web-based file viewer, the work undertaken to make a document accessibility is better preserved for an accessible interface for both desktop and mobile users. Contact us at um.weboffice@maine.edu if you are interested in publishing documents online using this file viewer option.

Coming in September: DubBot Accessibility Checker

DubBot is a new website compliance checking tool (replacing Monsido) that we will be available for use in September. A training session for DubBot was conducted on Aug. 7, 2023 via zoom with a representative from the vendor. The Digital Communications team attended this training, and we look forward to using this tool soon.

Using DubBot to improve your website

If you want to learn more about DubBot’s reports and how you may use this information to fix broken links, find misspellings, and discover where content updates are needed, email um.weboffice@maine.edu to set up a training session.

WebAIM WAVE Accessibility Checker

WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) has provided comprehensive web accessibility solutions since 1999, and their free online service is available to anyone for free use to evaluate a web page. Simply navigate to the , and enter your web page address.

WebAIM also provides  which can be used directly within the Chrome and Firefox browsers to run their web accessibility checkers more easily.

Coming in September: DubBot Accessibility Checker

DubBot is a new website compliance checking tool (replacing Monsido) that we will begin using by September. One of the benefits of Dubbot is that it offers reports with the same visual style of accessibility checker as the WebAIM WAVE tool, with some added benefits:

• A “Read Only” version of the reports may be shared with anyone, including those without a DubBot account. .
• Registered DubBot users will be able to create task workflows for identified issues. This will be helpful in alerting Digital Communications to fix issues with the overall website templates.
• The same task workflow system will be used by Digital Communications to send tasks to individual site owners as accessibility issues are discovered.

Accessibility and inclusion sessions at WPCampus 2023

. Note: while this conference is occurring in the central time zone, we have adjusted the date/times below for Eastern Daylight Time.

Thursday July 13

noon – 12:45 p.m.

2:30 – 3:15 p.m.

6:00 – 6:45 p.m.

Friday, July 14

11:00 – 111:45 a.m.

noon – 12:45 p.m.

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