Web Accessibility

WCAG 2.0 AA Standards

In 2017, the College adopted a new college-wide policy for web accessibility. Follow these color guidelines to ensure your web content meets WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.

Success criteria for contrast ratios

The intent of this standard is to provide enough contrast between text and its background so that it can be read by people with moderately low vision (who do not use contrast-enhancing assistive technology).

• 4.5:1 for normal text (14 pt and smaller)
• 3:1 for large text (18 pt and larger, or 14 pt bold and larger)

The point unit is indicated in the WCAG guidelines; however, points are rarely used in web development. This can create confusion! The point is larger than the more common pixel.

1 px = 0.75 pt
1 pt = 1.33 px
Therefore, 14 pt = 18.66 px (rounded to 19) and 18 pt = 24 px.

Font size is the size when the content is delivered. It does not include resizing that may be done by a user.

Essentially, any text under 24 px (or 19 px bold) must use Link Blue or darker on a white background. Please test contrast ratios for other color combinations using the following tools.

Green River College's HTML colors have been carefully selected to comply with WCAG accessibility. They should not be altered in any way.

WCAG Accessibility Tools

Accessibility is everyone's job at Green River and is essential to our College's mission. Green River College is dedicated to ensuring that faculty and staff can create accessible content for students and other members of the campus community. Over the upcoming year, there will be training conducted for the campus community on how to create accessible documents. 

Here are two of College Relation's primary resources to help you in creating accessible documents.

• Adobe's instructions on creating and verifying PDF accessibility Provides detailed step-by-step instructions regarding PDFs.
• SBCTC Accessibility Tutorials Free online resource on how to create accessible documents (see Module Two).

 For compliance information contact the Executive Director of College Relations (ext. 3360).