The University of Michigan College of Engineering is committed to providing a fully accessible website experience for all users of all abilities, including those who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers, screen enlargement software, and alternative keyboard input devices to navigate the web.
Ongoing efforts to ensure accessibility
We follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 as our minimum standard for accessibility and strive to exceed that standard whenever possible. This internationally agreed-upon standard aligns with the University of Michigan’s policy on accessibility for electronic and information technology. As we add new pages and functionality to our website, all designs, code, and content entry practices are checked against these standards.
Website accessibility is an ongoing process. We continually (quarterly, at a minimum) test content and features for WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance and remediate any issues to ensure we meet or exceed the standards. Team members test and monitor our website using the Siteimprove accessibility and performance platform and perform manual testing to ensure keyboard and screen reader operability.
Accessibility features on our website
The components of this design system, when used according to their guidelines, meet WCAG 2.0 AA standards which ensure they are perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for site visitors with motor, sensory and cognitive disabilities. The following is a list of items we have included in our WordPress theme, Forty-Two, to improve its accessibility:
Visual
People with visual disabilities, including people whose vision has deteriorated naturally with age, may have trouble perceiving content that’s excessively small or has low contrast.
- The default contrast between background color and text in this system is at least 4.5:1 for regular text and at least 3:1 for large text and for graphics.
- Motion graphics have audio or screen reader-accessible text descriptions.
Approximately 1-in-12 men and 1-in-200 women experience color blindness. When color is used to convey meaning in this system, redundancy will be provided in a format that doesn’t depend on color.
Motor
People with motor disabilities may not be able to use a mouse. All components in this system support full keyboard use.
Cognitive
Dyslexia affects 5-10 percent of the population. We use Open Sans for body type due to its even spacing, pronounced ascenders and descenders and lack of serifs.
Movement sensitivity/Vestibular disorders
Animation is used to provide feedback for a user interaction or to communicate changes in scale, scope and/or change over time.
Animated gifs should load when the user reaches them on the screen (lazy load) and should only loop once.
Where we’re improving
In our efforts to maintain our website’s accessibility standard, we are targeting the following areas:
- Robust mobile navigation
- Placing constraints around use of certain text treatments (capitalization, italics)
This is part of our broader effort to make everyone’s experience at Michigan Engineering a welcoming and enjoyable one. Please note that while we make every effort to provide information accessible for all users, we cannot guarantee the accessibility of third party websites to which we may link.
Accessibility Support Contact
We welcome comments, questions, and feedback on our website. If you are using assistive technologies and are having difficulty using our website, please email the web team at [email protected]. We will do our best to assist you and resolve issues.