Visual Guidelines on the University of Maine System Website
Readers (or “users”) come from many walks of life: Some users primarily use their mobile devices to access websites, others primarily use a desktop or tablet; some users are seasoned internet users, others have only just started using the internet regularly in the last few years; some users are fully abled, while others may have visual or motor skill impairments and use assistive technology, may not be sighted with the full color spectrum or may have differing cognitive abilities; some users will come to the University of Maine System website with decades of experience speaking and reading in English, while others may have less experience with the English language.
For these reasons, it is important that content is displayed in a pervasive, consistent manner across the entire University of Maine System website so that all users, regardless of experience or ability, can understand and navigate this website. The University of Maine System website (www.maine.edu) has been hard coded to meet a style guide that is accessible, usable on multiple devices and easy to navigate for users of varying technology experiences.
Please review your web content for errors in visual guidelines using the guidance above. You can find additional information and resources on the University of Maine System Information Technology (IT) Accessibility Accessible Materials & Websites webpage.
The University of Maine System is an institution of higher learning and an institution that prioritizes accessible web content, consistency and accuracy are important.
The University of Maine System website is required to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA web accessibility standards (External Site) due to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Resolution. Because of the OCR Resolution, a priority for the website is all content prioritizes accessible web content, which requires both consistency and accuracy.
Visual guidelines topics
Below you will find topics to explore and learn about the University of Maine System Visual Guidelines:
- Alt text
- Adding a featured image
- Adding media to the website
- Color contrast ratio
- Graphic charts and complicated images
- Highlighting and emphasizing text with bold, italic and other styling of words
- Images
- PDFs
- Shortcodes
- Videos
What to avoid when editing your website
Due to accessibility requirements, editors of this website should never do the following:
- Add iFrames
- Hard code custom HTML
- Hard code custom CSS
- Use text-in-image as a featured image
- Enable underline text for text that is not a link
- Use bold for any reason other than to indicate information categories
- Use italics
- Add bold formatting to Headings
- Use bold instead of Headings to label information
- Use all capital letters to emphasize words
Please also do not use any features in which you have not been trained on, instead contact the web content management team for additional training or assistance if you want to add special features to your website.