Do you edit your department’s web content? Do you design websites or do development? The resources on this page will help you make your web content accessible.
It's normal to feel overwhelmed when you begin learning about digital accessibility. There's a lot to learn and it will take time. Start with the role-based training in Siteimprove, which will introduce you to a variety of topics. Then, take a deeper dive into each concept.
At this time, UC Berkeley is working to meet the success criteria outlined in WCAG 2.0 AA.
Step 1: How to comply with the Web Accessibility Procedures
How to Access
Go to the How to comply with the Web Accessibility Procedures training on the UCB training learning management system. Complete the training. Your completion will be tracked and reported on. This training is required for all UC Berkeley employees.
Step 2: Role-based training in Siteimprove
How to log in
Siteimprove is a service used by UC Berkeley to test and monitor our websites for accessibility. They also offer a number of introductory training courses about digital accessibility. To access Siteimprove's training:
- Log into siteimprove.ucop.edu with your CalNet ID. This establishes an account for you in Siteimprove.
- Click on the Help Center and training drop-down menu and select Training & certifications. This will take you to Siteimprove Frontier, their new training platform.
Courses for digital content creators
Take the courses that match your role and responsibilities:
- Accessibility for Content Creators (1 hr)
- Accessibility for Designers (1 hr)
- Accessibility for Documents (1 hr)
Courses for web designers and developers
Step 3: Concepts for everyone to learn
The following concepts are crucial for accessibility, and you’ll need to learn them whether you’re a content editor or a web developer. You may want to focus on one concept at a time.
Step 4: Advanced and specialized courses
- W3C / WAI: Digital Accessibility Foundations - this is a free, 4-week online course offered by the same organization that produces the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that UC Berkeley uses as our compliance goal.
- LinkedIn Learning courses are free for UCB employees - there are a variety of courses related to accessible web design and document creation.
- If you need to learn to remediate PDFs yourself (instead of using a vendor), we recommend LinkedIn Learning.
- PDF remediation (5 hours)
- Advanced Accessible PDFs (6 hours)
Step 5: Learn to use accessibility checkers
Here are some excellent tools for running automated accessibility checks. There are lots of others you may choose to adopt, but these three cover most of what you can check for with automated tests.
Remember: Automated testing tools are extremely useful, but they can’t check everything.
- Siteimprove is a robust service that’s available for all UC websites.
- WAVE is a free browser extension. Learn how to use WAVE.
- Grackle Docs, Grackle Sheets, and Grackle Slides are Google Add-ons. Access to the paid version of these add-ons will be available for all Berkeley employees as well as students starting Fall 2023.
Step 6: Find and bookmark resources
There are lots of fantastic, free resources to help you build accessible communications. Here are a few to get you started, but we recommend building your own set of go-to resources over time.