Page title
- the title is the first thing a screen reader reads, so it should describe the topic or purpose of the page
- the page title should be short, active, and meaningful
- if your page is transactional (has a call to action), include a verb in the title like ‘Pay for..’
- check page titles start with a capital letter and all following words are in lowercase unless they are a proper noun
Page title examples
✔ Regulations for environmental waste
❌ Regulations
✔ Apply for council tax discounts
❌ Apply for it
Structure your content using headings
- people who use screen readers will often navigate a website by having the screen reader read out the headings
- structure your content into bite-sized chunks and give those chunks a heading
- use the correct heading styles (H1, H2, H3, and so on) in descending order and do not skip any levels
Page length
- there is no ideal minimum or maximum page length
- make the main body of your page as focused as possible
- get to the point quickly to help your reader find the information they need
Make link text meaningful
- people who use screen readers will often navigate a website by tabbing from link to link, without reading the surrounding text
- this means that the screen reader reads a list of links to them
- this is only useful if the individual links are meaningful, even when read without the surrounding text
Read more about writing descriptive links
Examples of descriptive links
✔ Applying for council tax discounts
❌ View a map of Sutton
Use tables sparingly
- do not use tables to layout text
- use tables for data that is too detailed or complicated to be described adequately in text, and which lends itself to being presented in rows and columns
- make sure the table has a header row or screen readers will ignore it
Example of accessible table
| Council tax band | Range of values (£) | Sutton Council (£) | ASC Precept (£) | GLA Precept (£) | Total Council Tax (£) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Up to 40,000 | 882.51 | 112.75 | 242.44 | 1,237.70 |
| B | 40,001 - 52,000 | 1,029.60 | 131.55 | 282.85 | 1,444.00 |
| C | 52,001 - 68,000 | 1,176.68 | 150.34 | 323.25 | 1,650.27 |
| D | 68,001 - 88,000 | 1,323.77 | 169.13 | 363.66 | 1,856.56 |
Provide alt text for images
- ensure all images have alt text describing the image
- this text will be read out by screen readers to people who are unable to view the image
- follow the guidelines for providing alt text for images
Avoid using text in images as the sole method of conveying information
- screen readers can’t access any text that is part of an image
- the text can also not be found by search engines
- if you need to use an image with text in it, repeat that text in the document or the image’s alt text
- find out more information about providing alt text for images
Publish everything as webpages or as accessible PDFs
- we try to publish all our content on webpages
- you can publish the content as an accessible PDF when it would be impractical to publish it as a webpage
- we do not use or link to any other document formats
Make sure all PDFs are accessible
- gov.uk provides information on how to publish accessible PDFs
- WebAIM provides information on how to create PDFs from Word docs
- Adobe provides information on how to scan documents and convert them into accessible PDFs