IT Policy

University IT Policy 5.11

This study examined four categories of web sites to determine:

• what types of issues typically need to be fixed to make a site accessible, and
• how many hours of a person's time would be needed to fix all the issues found on a typical site.

The four categories of sites in the study are:

1. Basic HTML Sites
2. CommonSpot Sites
3. Multimedia Sites
4. Moderately interactive sites with search functions or databases

• A second impact study, focusing on faculty sites, has been added to this page.

Basic HTML Site: Large (~10,000 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 55.5
  (Range of 48-63 hours depending on experience level of person working on site)
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (35.5 hours to fix; range of 28-43 hours depending on experience level)
  • Table Headers Missing (14 hours to fix)
  • Forms - lacking proper labels (6 hours to fix)

Basic HTML Site: Small (~25 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 1.125
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (1.125 hours to fix)

CommonSpot Site: Medium (~2500 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 72+
• Typical issues:
  • Forms - lacking proper labels (unknown - PaperThin needs to fix)
  • Table Headers Missing (72 hours to fix)

CommonSpot Site: Small (~75 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 16.75+
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (0.25 hours to fix)
  • PDFs - lacking formatting tags (16.5 hours to fix)
  • Forms - lacking proper labels (unknown - PaperThin needs to fix)

Multimedia Site: Small (~30 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 43.75
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (9.75 hours to fix)
  • PDFs - lacking formatting tags (22.5 hours to fix; range is 15-30 hours)
  • Table Headers Missing (0.25 hours to fix)
  • Flash Interactives (1.25 hours to fix)
  • Video Synchronized Captions (10 hours for 50 minutes of video)

Moderately Interactive Site: Small (~15 pages)

This category includes sites with search functions or databases.

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 8.95
• Typical issues:
  • Scripts needing valid NOSCRIPT (2 hours to fix)
  • Alt Text Missing (1.25 hours to fix)
  • Forms - lacking proper labels (5.7 hours to fix)

Impact Study #2: Faculty Sites

Summary of Typical Issues

• Sites built with templates are the easiest to change, because a change made in the template can be propagated to all pages.
• Small items that are missing on most sites - alt text, table headers, frame titles, form labels - may be possible to fix quickly with global or template changes.
• The main issue on most sites is alternative text for media files, which can be produced relatively easily in PowerPoint or Word but not from PDF files.
• Sites that make extensive use of applications such as Flash are the most difficult to make accessible.

Multi-purpose Faculty Site (~120 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 105
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (16.5 hours to fix)
  • Table Headers Missing (0.6 hours to fix)
  • Inaccessible scripts (4.2 hours to fix)
  • Media - PDF and Flash (44 hours to fix)
  • Forms - lacking proper labels (5.7 hours to fix)
  • Skip Navigation Links (4 hours to fix)

Course Site (~50 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 45
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (4 hours to fix)
  • Table Headers Missing (5.2 hours to fix)
  • Media - PDF, Audio & PowerPoint alternatives (24 hours to fix)
  • Skip Navigation Links (12 hours to fix)
• General issue is usage of media files and PowerPoint presentations and missing alternative content.

Lecture Notes Site (~10 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 13
• Typical issues:
  • Media - PDF Documents (12.5 hours to fix)
  • Skip Navigation Links (0.5 hours to fix)
• Overall high level of accessibility, the issues are mostly in PDF files and missing skip links option on the site which can be fixed on the template level.

Document and Image Repository (~60 pages)

• Estimated hours to make site accessible: 49
• Typical issues:
  • Alt Text Missing (10.5 hours to fix)
  • Table Headers Missing (0.6 hours to fix)
  • Frame titles missing (0.25 hours to fix)
  • Media - PDF, image map & applet alternatives (17.25 hours to fix)
  • Forms - lacking proper labels (5 hours to fix)
  • Skip Navigation Links (15.25 hours to fix)
• General issue is usage of image maps, number of PDF files.