Accessibility

It is the policy of the CSU This link will take you to an external website in a new tab. to make information technology resources and services accessible to all CSU students, faculty, staff and the general public regardless of disability.

Ensuring that articles are accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies is not only the right thing to do, it is a CSU mandate and aligns with federal law This link will take you to an external website in a new tab.. Journal editors have options when it comes to how accessibility compliance is managed within the workflow of the journal.

• Journals can provide ADA-compliant templates to authors or transfer manuscripts to ADA-compliant templates upon acceptance (see the Templates section of this guide)
• Editors can provide resources like those shared below and require authors to run their manuscripts through an accessibility checker prior to submission
• Journals can conduct accessibility checking and remediation themselves during the production phase of publication
• Journals can discuss with their library contact what, if any, remediation services (in-house or freelance) are available

The following resources provide guidance on making PDF and Microsoft Word documents accessible:

• Create Accessible PDFs (US GSA) This link will take you to an external website in a new tab.
• The National Center on Disability and Access to Education This link will take you to an external website in a new tab.
• Make Your Word Documents Accessible (Microsoft) This link will take you to an external website in a new tab.

Sharing with authors resources to assist them in making their manuscripts compliant while they are still in Microsoft Word or other word processing formats is the easiest way to create accessible articles. While it is possible to remediate PDFs, it is more cumbersome.