Accessibility Policy

AUTHORITY

The Arizona Department of Administration – Arizona Strategic Enterprise Technology Office (ADOA-ASET) shall develop, implement and maintain a coordinated statewide plan for information technology (A.R.S. §41-3504(A (1))), including, adopting statewide technical, coordination, and IT policy and standards (A.R.S. § 41-3504(A (1(a)))).

PURPOSE

To establish a statewide policy that lowers the technical barriers to accessibility on Arizona Web sites for persons with disabilities. SCOPE This applies to all budget units. Budget unit is defined as a department, commission, board, institution or other agency of the state organization receiving, expending or disbursing state funds or incurring obligations of the state including the board of regents and the state board of directors for community colleges but excluding the universities under the jurisdiction of the board of regents and the community colleges under their respective jurisdictions and the legislative or judicial branches. A.R.S. § 41-3501(2). The Budget Unit Chief Executive Officer (CEO), working in conjunction with the Budget Unit Chief Information Officer (CIO), shall be responsible for ensuring the effective implementation of Statewide Information Technology PSPs within each Agency.

POLICY

To provide an accessibility model in which web content authors, format designers, and software developers within State agencies understand their roles in providing persons with disabilities, access to existing and developing State web sites. The following web page designs and features for completing the accessibility model are to be addressed for all State web sites.

GRAPHICS

• Simple images; linked images; content images; graphical text; ASCII Art; list bullets; spacer images; animated graphics-text equivalent; animated graphics-frame rate.
• INFORMATION IN COLOR Information in color; color contrast.
• MOVING CONTENT Static background color; moving text.
• DOWNLOADABLE FILES Graphics in downloadable files; PDF files.
• REPETITIVE CONTENT Skipping navigation links.
• DATA TABLES Identifying row and column headers; using SCOPE to group table cells.
• MULTIMEDIA Sounds 10; speech-short clips (up to 60 seconds); speech-long clips; video-short clips (up to 10 seconds); video-long clips.
• IMAGE MAPS Image map graphics-text equivalent; client-side image map regions; server-side image map regions.
• STYLE SHEETS Style sheets.
• FORMS Forms-label placement; forms-associating labels and controls; forms-time responses.
• SCRIPTS Scripts-text equivalents; scripts-keyboard accessibility.
• APPLETS and PLUG-INS Applets and plug-ins-links; applets and plug-ins-text equivalent information or functionality.
• FRAMES Frames-labeling; frames-NOFRAMES elements.
• KEYBOARD CONTROL Keyboard control.
• TEXT-ONLY PAGES Text-only versions.
• BIOMETRIC IDENTIFICATION Alternative identification.
• EQUIVALENT FACILITATION Equivalent access.
• RESPONSIBILITY It is the responsibility of each agency to remain current with the development of accessible information technology through their ADA/508 Coordinators.

KNOWN LIMITATIONS OF THIS POLICY

Individuals with (or without) disabilities access the Web with widely varying sets of capabilities, software, and hardware. While this policy does provide the ability for individuals with disabilities to access Web based information, this policy does not include requirements for the production of every known accessibility need, due to known limitations on existing technology. The limitations of this policy, at this time, are as follows:

• Braille - this policy does not address Braille rendering.
• Synthesized Speech - not covered by this policy.
• Input Modalities - no voice input, only keyboard and pointing devices.

REFERENCES