Web Accessibility at the University of California

Use Plain Text for Text

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The Challenge
Web designers often create menu elements or buttons that have a textual component in the graphic. These are still graphics, though – not text – and screen readers and screen enlargement software can't interpret them properly.

It is also far easier to edit and maintain text than graphical elements.

Solutions

• Do not create graphic elements that look like text elements. Use real text instead.
• To control the style of text elements, use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
• Use a Web-based markup language (such as MathML) for mathematical equations and graphs when possible, since the language is designed in part for accessibility.

Additional Information

• WebAIM article on using real fonts versus graphical representations
• United Nations article on using markup language versus graphics
• World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guideline 3.1