The two basic principles of accessible web site design are to create pages that are presented correctly and to provide content in a comprehensible manner to facilitate web site navigation.
An accessible website is one whose content can be correctly used by all users. The most important thing to make a website accessible is to understand that people access the web in very different ways.
Therefore, an accessible web site has to present the information in a way that users can access it regardless of the device used, regardless of each user's own abilities or level of digital literacy.
In addition to facilitating good communication with the user, the Universitat de València website ensures that, in its environment, each user can communicate in the most optimal way with the web or mobile applications to provide equal access to information with equal opportunities.
The Universitat de València's web and mobile application accessibility regulations are mainly governed by the Spanish Royal Decree 1112/2018 (not available in English), of 7 September, on the accessibility of websites and applications for public sector mobile devices, as well as other regulations.
Some of the functionalities that have been implemented in the Universitat de València's web portal to allow access to all the web's contents with greater ease are:
- The visual characteristics of the portal (typeface, font, and background colour, etc.) have been defined by means of the style sheet because the user can adjust the styles of the text to his/her preferences.
- The sizes of the fonts have been defined with relative units so the user can increase or decrease the size of the font from the menu-options of the browser.
- If a user accesses www.uv.es with a browser that does not support stylesheets or scripts, this will not be a problem since he or she will be able to access all the contents of the UV portal equally.
- The information architecture of the portals provides a clear and intuitive structure both for users who can see all the content and for those who read the information with a screen reader, and also for those who deactivate the style sheet, etc. Under this aim, the section headings, lists and the rest of the elements that help the general understanding of the website have been defined.
The HTML and CSS code of the pages is adapted to the formal grammars to guarantee the correct visualization of the contents in different browsers.
In any case, it is possible that you may find some pages that do not completely adapt to these standards, since some of the sections contained in the portal are in the process of being adapted and improved. In this sense, the Universitat de València allows any individual or legal entity to report any possible non-compliance of a UV web page or application for mobile devices, according to the established accessibility requirements. It also allows the transmission of other difficulties in accessing the content or to make any queries or suggestions for improvement regarding the accessibility of the website or application:
Our aim is to continue working every day to improve the accessibility and usability of the Universitat de València's corporate web portals and mobile applications.