This page covers accessibility requirements for web content managers and web ambassadors who publish or maintain pages on louisiana.edu. It focuses on content-level responsibilities. Platform-level issues are handled by Web Development & IT.
Logical Reading Order
when web pages don’t follow a logical reading order for people who rely on keyboard navigation and screen readers.
Heading Structure
Screen reader users navigate pages by heading structure. Without correct headings, a page is inaccessible to anyone using a screen reader to browse. Never use bold text, font size, or color to simulate a heading.
- Use one H1 per page — the page title. In our CMS this is set in the page title field, not the body.
- Use H2 for major sections, H3 for subsections within those sections
- Never skip heading levels — do not go from H2 to H4, do not start with an H3
- Use the heading styles in the CMS editor toolbar — do not manually bold and enlarge text
so everyone can navigate your content with ease.
Images & Alt Text
Every image on a web page must either have a meaningful description or be explicitly marked as decorative. A missing alt attribute is a WCAG 1.1.1 failure.
- Informational images: write alt text that describes what the image shows and why it is relevant
- Decorative images: set alt="" (empty) so screen readers skip it entirely
- Images of text: avoid these. If necessary, the alt text must reproduce the text in the image
- Complex images (charts, graphs, infographics): provide a full text description nearby or in a caption
- Do not start alt text with ‘Image of’ or ‘Photo of’ — screen readers announce the image type automatically
Link Text
Screen reader users often navigate by hearing a list of all links on the page, stripped of surrounding context. Every link must make sense on its own.
- Correct: ‘Review the Web Accessibility Policy’, ‘Apply for Admissions’, ‘Download the 2025–26 Academic Calendar’
- Incorrect: ‘Click here’, ‘Read more’, ‘Learn more’, bare URLs (https://...)
- When linking a document, include the file type: ‘Accessibility Policy (PDF)’
- Avoid having multiple links with identical text going to different destinations
Tables
Use tables only for data with a genuine row-and-column relationship — never to control visual layout. Layout tables scramble reading order for screen reader users.
- Mark the first row as a header row using the table editor — do not simply bold the text
- Keep tables simple: avoid merged cells, nested tables, and empty cells
- Add a caption or brief introductory sentence describing what the table shows
- If a table requires merged cells or multiple header rows to make sense, consider restructuring the content as prose or a list instead
to ensure everyone can understand your data.