Text-only pages

If accessibility cannot be accomplished in any other way, provide a text-only page with equivalent information or functionality. Update the content of the text-only page whenever the primary page changes.

If after examining all the checkpoints, you find that compliance with the checklist cannot be achieved any other way, a text-only age with equivalent information and functionality, should be provided to make the Web site accessible. However, this is not the ideal solution. The text-only pages must be maintained and updated in congruence with the primary Web pages.

For additional information regarding the difficulties of text-only sites, please read the following helpful article from AccEase: Text-only websites: five key difficulties (link resides outside of ibm.com).

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The following techniques and examples support Checkpoint 15 from the IBM Web Accessibility Checklist.

The following techniques are the minimum required to meet this checkpoint:

In order to keep the equivalent information and functionality for the primary Web page and the text-only page, publish both versions at the same time. In addition, from the primary Web page, make the link to the text-only page easily identifiable to the user.

The BBC provides a tool which can be used to create an automatic text-only version of a Web page. Betsie (BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer) is a free server-side solution which can be downloaded at http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/betsie/index.html.

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Test the Web site to ensure that it complies with accessibility requirements.

Tools

There are no tools required to test this checkpoint.

Techniques

The following technique is required to verify this checkpoint:

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