Web Site Accessibility
Guidelines for SCS Webmasters

What is Accessibility? - Making Your Web Site Accessible
Checklist for Accessibility
Must Have Items - Should Have Items - Try To Have Items
Items for More Experienced Webmasters
Apply These Items if Your Use These Special Features

Cascading Style Sheets

Rationale

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) describe how elements within a Web page are presented. A different style sheet can be used to control how a document page is presented on displays, in print, or perhaps how the page is pronounced or brailled. A style sheet is an elegantly designed yet simple mechanism for adding styles, such as fonts, colors, and spacing to Web documents. However, not all style sheet presentation features can be rendered satisfactorily with older browsers. Because CSS is not supported by all browsers and assistive technology, it is important that Web pages be readable without requiring style sheets.

Techniques for Working with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

The following techniques may be used to meet the checkpoint described in the Special Features - Style Sheets section of the Checklist for Web Site Accessibility.

Reading Documents without Style Sheets

To organize documents so they can be read without style sheets, provide text equivalents for any important image or text generated by style sheets (e.g. via the background-image, list-style, or content properties). Ensure important content appears in the document object. Text generated by style sheets is not part of the document source and will not be available to assistive technologies that access content through the Document Object Model Level 1 (DOM1). When CSS positioning is used to create tabular effects, consider using a TABLE element to create the same effect. If a rule (e.g., the HR element) is used to indicate structure, make the document readable without style sheets by indicating the structure in a non-visual way as well. (e.g., by using structural markup).

Style Sheet Standards and Browsers

Many screen readers and web page readers (such as the IBM Home Page Reader) supports CSS and most HTML presentation elements in the graphics view. Online resources, such as the Webreview.com Master Compatibility Chart, outline which CSS features are supported in which browsers.

For background and additional information on how accessibility is affected by style sheets, see the W3C's CSS Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines describe in detail how style sheets might be used to create accessible pages.

Testing

To see if your web page will be accessible without requiring style sheets simply view the page having the style sheet in a browser with style sheets turned off. The page should still be readable.

What is Accessibility? - Making Your Web Site Accessible
Checklist for Accessibility
Must Have Items - Should Have Items - Try To Have Items
Items for More Experienced Webmasters
Apply These Items if Your Use These Special Features