LAST UPDATED - DEC 15, 2025 HEATHERV
Accessibility is essential to ensure all users, including those with vision, hearing, motor or cognitive disabilities, can access and understand our content. It’s also legally required by April 2026 and supports UW Medicine’s mission to provide equitable care and information.
Best Practices for Creating Accessible Content
To support this guidance and enable content owners to take practical action, please reference the Accessibility at UW web page.
Here are the most common content-related areas to be aware of:
- Add alt text to images so people using screen readers know what the image is showing – if the image adds important information and is not purely decorative.
- Use strong color contrast so text is easy to read (such as dark text on a light background).
- Write clear link text that explains where the link goes – don’t use “click here” or paste full web addresses.
- Use proper list formatting (bullets or numbers), not dashes or spaces.
- Include captions on videos so people who can’t hear the audio can still follow along.
- Do not use too many emojis in copy (they are read aloud by a screen reader and can be distracting).
- Make sure #HashtagesUseCamelCase so they can be ready by screen readers.
Accessibility Is Our Shared Responsibility
Timothy Dellit, UW Medicine’s CEO, shares his thoughts in this article on Vitals on the importance of ensuring that our web pages, mobile apps, course content and other digital resources are accessible to everyone.