Office of University Relations

Legal requirements

Arkansas Act 1227 of 1999 states that it is "an act to secure the benefits of access to information technology for individuals who are blind or visually impaired through the procurement of such technology in accordance with standards for equivalent access by both visual and non-visual means; and for other purposes."

The standards for compliance with Act 1227:

(Section 5.1 - 5.15 of the Standard Statement - Web Page Development)

  1. Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via alt, longdesc, or in element content). This includes: images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets, and programmatic objects, ASCII art, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video.
  2. Clearly identify the target of each link.
  3. Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.
  4. If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information (or functionality), and is updated as often as the inaccessible (original) page.
  5. Create a logical tab order through links, form controls, and objects. Provide keyboard shortcuts to important links (including those in client-side image maps), form controls, and groups of form controls. Make sure the shortcuts do not conflict with standard Windows shortcuts.
  6. Associate labels explicitly with their controls.
  7. Until user agents support explicit associations between labels and form controls, for all form controls with implicitly associated labels, ensure that the label is properly positioned.
  8. Until user agents (including assistive technologies) render side-by-side text correctly, provide a linear text alternative (on the current page or some other) for all tables that lay out text in parallel, word-wrapped columns.
  9. Ensure that dynamic content is accessible or provide an alternative presentation or page.
  10. Ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.
  11. Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen. (Priority 2 for images, Priority 3 for text).
  12. Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear automatically and do not change the current window without informing the user.
  13. Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets.
  14. Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup. Ensure that information is not conveyed through color alone.
  15. For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers use markup to associate data cells with header cells.