Creating Accessible On-line Course Materials with Mallard

Tips for Authors

Authors add course content by inserting their own HTML documents, so it is up to page authors to ensure the accessibility of course content.

Other Accessibility Issues with Mallard

Even if your course content is fully accessible, you will not be able to make courses on Mallard accessible if you plan to use all of its features. Here are some of the accessibility issues with Mallard:

1. No alt text for images in main frame. This is especially a problem with the buttons and icons. Without alt text, it is difficult to find the course material, read announcements, etc.
2. There are a number of accessibility problems associated with the use of frames:
   • Frames are untitled.
   • Choices in one frame (i.e. selecting a button) affect content in a different frame. This means someone using a browser that does not support frames will find it difficult to impossible to access most of the course content features, including basic navigation, glossary, search, bulletins, etc.
   • Missing <NOFRAMES> content.
3. Not all of the code is standard HTML:
   • Onmouseover script embedded in anchors
4. There are places where the color of text is used to give information that is not provided in any alternative form. Examples: late assignments in grade book are given in red, manually corrected scores in gradebook are given in green.
5. Uses physical styles, such as <CENTER> and <FONT> tags, to format text instead of using web style sheets.
6. In course content listing, books meant to expand and compress outlines do not have alt text, so user is not sure what to do with them.

Contact us at infotechaccess@server.rehab.uiuic.edu

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