Accessible Web Sites: Best Practices

1. Enter links as links - not in rich text fields.
   Recommended way to do this is to have a box in the right column titled "Related Resources". Another option is to put layer the content in your box so that you have your text, then your links, then more text if necessary, etc.
2. Reuse links from the Site Index. These are the official links that get updated first.
3. Keep a master file of links you use a lot and reuse the links from the master.
4. Reuse content boxes - do not copy - so that content is easy to update.
5. Use the LG link checker to check links. (It will only check links that were added as links; it will not check links that were added in text boxes or widgets.)
6. Test your new links when you add them to the page.
7. Test your guide in SortSite whenever you edit it.

• Do not copy text from Word or other applications directly into the rich text field. It adds all kinds of bad code.
• Do take a peak at the Source code to make sure things are looking clean.
• Do not use a table for laying out content.
• Do use a table for data or comparison charts. And use caption, thead, and th tags to identify the purpose and columns.
• Do not use the Font dropdown.
• Do use Format to indicate page structure, i.e. when something is a heading <h3> or subheading <h4>
• Do not use underline for text that is not a link. 
• Do use <strong> (B in the rich text editor) for bold text 

W3C recommends a maximum length of 64 characters for page titles.

• Every guide and every page needs to be assigned a friendly URL.
• The friendly URL for guides in a particular library need to start with:
  • Archives:   /archives/
  • Art Library: /art/
  • Ekstrom Library: /ekstrom/
  • Kornhauser Health Sciences Library: /kornhauser/
  • Law Library:  /law/
  • Music Library: /music/
• Google recommends separating keywords in URLs by dashes instead of underscores.