On www.uib.no, both the technical solution and the content must meet the requirements for universal design. The requirements are defined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 standard, and are required by law through the Norwegian Equality and Anti-Discrimination Act.
Some of this is solved technically in the publishing tool, but much depends on you as the person publishing content. This page gives an overview of the key principles.
Introductory resources
- Watch the Norwegian Supervisory Authority for Universal Design’s video “Universal design in 2 minutes” (Norwegian)
- Take the e-learning course on universal design (developed by Difi) (Norwegian).
The course provides basic knowledge to make it easier to create content that is universally designed. The target audience is anyone working with text, images, or video/audio online in the public sector. Free and open to everyone.
Language
Always write in the correct language for the correct language version.
English content on Norwegian pages (or vice versa) breaches WCAG requirement 3.1.1, which requires that the page’s language is correctly defined. Screen readers and other assistive technologies use this to read text aloud with the correct pronunciation and grammar.
Link texts
Link texts must be descriptive. The user should understand where the link leads before they click. Avoid link texts like “click here,” “read more,” or “here.” These are meaningless for users navigating with a screen reader, since they only hear the link text without the surrounding text.
Example:
Bad: “You can read more about image use here.”
Good: “See UiB’s guidelines for image use.”
Images and alt text
Images that convey meaningful information must have alternative text (alt text). The alt text is read aloud by screen readers and shown if the image fails to load.
- Write a short, concrete description of what the image shows.
- Don’t use “image of.” The screen reader already announces that it’s an image.
- Purely decorative images (that don’t add information) should have empty alt text, so screen readers skip over them.
- Avoid images containing text, especially as a main image. Text in images can’t be enlarged, translated, or read by screen readers.
Example:
Bad: “Image of students in Muséhagen”
Good: “Two students sit on a bench in Muséhagen reading”
Good: “Portrait of Kari Normann, professor at the Department of Biology”
Good: “The University Museum of Bergen seen from Muséplassen on a summer day”
Video: captioning and audio description
All videos published on uib.no must meet the requirements for captioning and audio description. Captioning makes content accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and to users in noisy environments. Audio description describes the visuals for people who are blind or have low vision.
See the guide to audio description and captioning of video for detailed requirements and instructions.
Heading structure
Correct use of heading levels (Heading 1–Heading 3) is important for screen readers to be able to navigate the page. A page should have one H1 (the page title, which is set automatically), and then use Heading 2 for main levels and Heading 3 for sub-levels.
- Don’t skip levels. Don’t go from Heading 2 directly to Heading 4.
- Don’t use headings for styling. Use them only to mark structure.
- Don’t use bold text instead of a heading where the content is actually a new section.
Resources and tools
Learn more about universal design
- Introduction to universal design – The Norwegian Supervisory Authority for Universal Design (Norwegian)
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – W3C
- E-learning course on universal design for web editors – DFØ (Norwegian, free)
Test your page
You can use browser extensions like Silktide and WAVE for automatic accessibility testing. These can uncover common issues like missing alt text and incorrect heading structure.