First Year Web Report
Executive Summary
The Cross Section sample is comprised of 66 web pages. These pages were chosen because of their high profile and potential to be used by both internal audiences (students, faculty and staff) and external audiences (prospective students, alumni, and community members). Automated scans done with AccVerify show a high level of accessibilty, but a closer examination with manual evaluation shows a problematic trend.
Automated Scan: Cross-Section Sample
The automated scan of the Cross Section gave the following results:
59 pages ( 89%) passed and 7 pages (11%) failed.
Failures in the automated scan were caused by missing "alt" tags and improper form inputs. Sixty-two, or 94%, of the 66 pages would still require a visual verification to assure compliance, especially with regard to the use of scripts, and the proper tagging of data tables.
Details of the automated scan are available Cross Section Scan--AccVerify Automated Reports
Repair Sample: Repair Sample with Visual Verification
The Repair Sample consists of 20 sites selected from the Cross-Section Sample, including two sites that failed automated testing and 18 that passed. AccVerify's Interview Wizard was used to apply additional visual verification.
The results are as follows:
7 pages ( 37%) passed and 12 (63%) failed. (Note that the total is 19, not 20 pages. An automated scan for the Faculty/Staff portal was done on a local copy of the site. The actual portal pages are addressed in the manual analysis, below.) Failures in this area of verification
were do almost exclusively to navigation that failed when javascript was disabled.
Details of the automated scan/interview wizard testing of the Repair Scan are available Repair Sample Scan--AccVerify/Interview Wizard Reports
Manual Evaluation
A manual evaluation of the repair sample was undertaken in order to have a complete evaluation of that sample. The manual evaluation used the CSU guidelines for Section 508 Manual Website Evaluation.
Follow the links below for details of the manual evaluation.
Repairing the Cross Section
Only three pages of the manual sample had no repair issues. In approximately half of the pages, the manual evaluation revealed serious problems with CSS and javascript. Without manually evaluating the entire cross section sample, we can estimate that approximately half of those pages (about 33) may have similar major issues that may require measures from small code changes to completely reworking the pages.
We will ask for input from the developers of the affected pages to estimate what it will take to make the needed repairs. This report will be updated as that information becomes available.
Trends
It is evident that there are varying levels of skill in the execution of cascading style sheets and the use of javascript. Most CSS is used to define type behaviors--few pages use CSS for layout. Most layout is still done with tables. Similarly, much of the javascript in use has been acquired from various sources without regard to its ultimate functionality.
There is no central control over campus websites. Because each college or division is responsible for its own pages, differences in management priorities and developer expertise will affect how quickly, and how well, the campus as a whole will be able to create truly accessible web pages.
These key issues point to the need for accelerated training and resources that will result in a core of experts who can be tapped to address accessibility issues campus wide.
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