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Research Guides@Tufts

Tufts Libraries journal publishing services

About accessibility

Accessible web content is designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use it, including perceiving, understanding, navigating, and interacting with it¹. This may include users using screen readers or navigating websites with the use of a keyboard rather than a mouse.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) offers an introduction to some of the web accessibility requirements for web content and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards.

Journals publishing with the Tufts Libraries open journal publishing service should ensure that their journal homepage and articles are accessible. Two key ways you can do this are to:

  • make sure your OJS theme is accessible
  • create your articles as accessible pdfs

See the Accessibility resources box for more details.


¹ Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), Introduction to Web Accessibility

Accessibility resources

OJS theme

An OJS theme controls the look and feel of your journal. You can choose from several OJS themes when you set up your journal.

The Default OJS theme is already accessible. If you select a different theme, we can work with you to identify opportunities to improve accessibility.

Creating accessible pdf files for articles

Start by creating an accessible article template in whatever program you're using to typeset your articles (note that the guides here link to resources created at other universities):

Then turn your document into an accessible pdf:

After you've created your pdf, check to make sure it is accessible:

  • Use the Prepare for accessibility tool in Acrobat DC to check for accessibility issues and fix them. Acrobat DC is available on Tufts public computers that have the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of applications, including in the Tisch Digital Design Studio
  • PAVE will check your document for accessibility issues and attempt to make corrections

General resources