Faculty, Lab and Research Site Accessibility

Faculty, staff, labs, centers, institutes and departments that manage public-facing websites connected to the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences should review their content for accessibility. This page offers a starting point for understanding expectations, identifying common issues and improving access for all users.

Who should use this page?

This guidance is for anyone managing a public-facing website tied to college or university work, including research labs, academic programs, centers, institutes, administrative units and special projects.

If your site shares research, services, events, resources, forms, downloads, contact information or other public content connected to USC, it should be reviewed for accessibility.

How to review your site and make it accessible

The WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool is the recommended starting point for reviewing your website. It helps identify common accessibility issues such as missing alt text, empty links, heading structure problems and color contrast concerns.

How to get started

Install WAVE. WAVE has a free extension available for Chrome, Firefox and Edge that makes it easy to test any web page for accessibility. You can also enter a web address directly on the WAVE website.
Run WAVE on each page of your site. Review your key pages first, including landing pages, contact pages and forms.
Focus on the most important results. Pay attention to:
- Errors
- Contrast Errors
- Alerts

The full report may seem extensive, but many issues are quick to fix.

Learn how to use WAVE

This 12-minute tutorial video provides an overview of how to use the WAVE accessibility checker and interpret results. It provides examples from two USC faculty websites.

Need help?

If you are unsure how to interpret WAVE results or how to fix issues, please reach out to the digital accessibility contacts and suggest 3–4 times you are available to meet via Teams.

Missing page language
If you can edit HTML, ensure your <html lang="en"> attribute is included.
Images without alt text
All images should include meaningful alt text. Most website editing platforms provide a field for this.
Low color contrast
Avoid light text on light backgrounds or dark text on dark backgrounds. (Yes, this means avoid garnet text on a black background.) Adjust colors to improve readability.
Links without text
Links must include descriptive text. If using an image as a link, include alt text or visible text.
Heading and structure issues
- Include one <h1> per page, typically the page title
- Use <h2> and lower heading levels for sections
- When possible, structure content using semantic elements such as <nav> and <main>. Many web editing systems (WordPress, Google Sites, etc.) take care of this automatically.
Inaccessible documents
PDFs, PowerPoints and other files must also be accessible.
- Consider converting content to HTML when possible
- Use remediation tools for required documents
- Contact us for available college tools and support

Update logos
If your site uses a University of South Carolina logo, ensure it is the current logo. This is not an accessibility issue, but it ensures brand compliance and helps your site look up-to-date.
Most issues are fixable
Many accessibility issues can be resolved quickly once identified.

The time required to review a website and update it for accessibility depends on the number of pages, images and accessibility issues your site has, and whether you hand-code the HTML on each page or use a system such as Google Sites or WordPress to edit the pages.

As an example, one lab's website in WordPress recently required a little less than an hour to fix all accessibility issues on about 12 pages. A hand-coded website with more pages and lots of pictures might require several hours.

Temporarily take the site down and restore it once issues are resolved
Remove or archive outdated content
- Add a notice such as:
  “This page is kept online as a web archive but is not actively used or updated. It may not meet modern accessibility standards.”
- Archived pages should not be updated further except to improve accessibility.
Personal sites
If a site is completely personal — not hosted, funded, required by the university, or directly related to your university work — it may not be required to meet all accessibility best practices. However, it should not be linked from your faculty profile if not.
Example: A website you use to recruit graduate students needs to meet accessibiilty standards. A website you use strictly to blog about your area of expertise and promote your availabilty for speaking engagements likely would not be required to meet the standards. However, we still encourage meeting accessibility guidelines to help meeting accessibility standards helps your audience.

Need a New Research Website?

If your current website cannot be easily remediated for accessibility, creating a new site may be a more efficient option.

Faculty can use platforms like USC Create to build accessible, flexible research websites. USC Create allows you to develop a personalized digital space for research projects, labs, publications and scholarly work.

These platforms are designed to support digital scholarship and can often be more manageable for maintaining accessibility over time.

When to consider a new site:

Your current site has significant accessibility issues
You rely heavily on PDFs or non-accessible content
You need more flexibility to organize research, labs or publications
You want a platform you can update independently

Tip: Even when using platforms like USC Create, accessibility is still your responsibility. Be sure to use proper headings, alt text for images and accessible document formats.

McCausland College of Arts and Sciences