• Web accessibility training
• Foundation-level training for T4 editors
• Web accessibility regulations for T4 editors

Implications of web accessibility regulations for T4 editors

Helping you to create compliant web content

If you have read the introduction to UK web accessibility legislation, you will know that UK regulations require public sector websites (which includes that of Universities) to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), version 2.2 to Level AA. (WCAG has three levels: A, AA and AAA.)

You may also have read (or heard) that websites need to have an accessibility statement to be compliant with web accessibility regulations.

WCAG 2.2 is extensive and quite technical in nature, and we do not expect T4 editors to follow it in its original form. We also don't expect T4 editors to be involved in the updating or accuracy of the T4-related accessibility statement, as this is handled by the Digital Team.

Instead, the training on this site will break down the WCAG requirements into rules and guidelines to follow when creating and editing T4 content.

The legal background has been included elsehwere on this site only so that you can look into the reasons for certain rules if you would like to understand why they're necessary. The practical training will not elaborate on this aspect in order to keep the content focused on what it is that you need to do, rather than why you need to do it.

Editing for assistive technologies

Many of the rules you'll encounter in web accessibility training are to ensure that web content is added to pages in such a way that the underlying code is compatible with assistive technologies.

You may potentially find several other ways to add content to pages. The results may appear to be the same and the page may seem to function correctly, but not all of these methods will actually be accessibility-compliant.

So when a rule might seem apparently needless, please bear in mind that maintaining the correct code is likely to be one of the reasons for it.