Available only in Finnish: Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan digipalvelulain aiheuttamia muutoksia yliopistojen vastuissa liittyen tuottamiinsa digitaalisten palveluiden saatavuuteen ja saavutettavuuteen. Artikkeli myös avaa keskeiset lakiin liittyvät käsitteet.
Digital Accessibility
Digital accessibility refers to the practice of designing and developing digital content and platforms—such as websites, applications, electronic documents, and multimedia—so that they are usable and accessible to everyone. The goal of digital accessibility is to ensure that people with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and other functional limitations can operate in digital environments effectively and independently.
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The key principles of digital accessibility are:
- Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presented in ways that all users can perceive. This may include providing text alternatives for images, adding captions to audio/video content, and ensuring content can be understood with assistive technologies such as screen readers.
- Operable: User interface components and navigation must be operable for all users. This means functionality must be accessible via a keyboard or other assistive input devices, not only a mouse.
- Understandable: Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable. This means consistent navigation patterns, clear instructions, simple language, and predictable functionality.
- Robust: Content must be sufficiently robust to be reliably interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This includes ensuring compatibility with current and future technologies. /fi/palvelut/ohjeet-digitaalisten-kanavien-sosiaalisesti-kestavaan-suunnitteluun (added by Anna Savisaari)
Digital accessibility is often guided by standards and guidelines, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Complying with these not only improves the usability and inclusiveness of digital products, but may also be a legal requirement in many jurisdictions, such as the United States’ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the EU’s Web Accessibility Directive.
Prioritizing digital accessibility means creating a more inclusive digital environment where everyone has equal access to information and digital resources.
Digital Services Act and Aalto University
The Act on the Provision of Digital Services is a Finnish law intended to improve the accessibility and compliance of public online services. The Digital Services Act is based on the European Union’s Web Accessibility Directive and obliges public entities to ensure that digital services are available to all users, including people with various functional limitations.
For Aalto University, this means that the digital services it provides—such as websites, learning environments, and other online services—must meet accessibility requirements. Aalto University, like other higher education institutions in Finland, is obliged to comply with the Digital Services Act and to ensure that its digital services are as barrier-free as possible for all users.
In practice, this means, for example, that the content on Aalto University’s websites must be accessible with various assistive technologies, such as screen readers. In addition, the sites must be structured and visually designed so that they are readable for people with visual or cognitive challenges.
Aalto University, like other organizations, can also prepare an accessibility statement that describes in more detail how the accessibility requirements have been taken into account and what development measures are planned. This helps users understand how well the services meet accessibility standards and what improvements can be expected.
The EU directive on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies implemented into Finnish law.
Web accessibility allows everyone, including people with disabilities, to perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Internet. The same vision of accessibility needs to apply to mobile applications, considering the developments in technology and trends in the last years.
A Digital Service is a software service designed to fulfil a product capability and run on a Digital Platform. Such a service might be a monolith, or composed of multiple microservices. It’s owned by a single Digital Service team responsible for understanding its customers, and producing a service that meets their needs.
For the first time a common set of rules on intermediaries' obligations and accountability across the single market will open up new opportunities to provide digital services across borders, while ensuring a high level of protection to all users, no matter where they live in the EU.
Instructions to produce accessible content in a single file or document
Make and publish accessible documents with the MS Accessibility Checker
Many Microsoft 365 apps include an Accessibility Checker that finds accessibility problems and lists suggestions.
Digital services for teaching
The Teacher Services team develops digital services for teaching and learning and provides support for their use. The team is part of the Learning Services.
Various aids are available for reading many higher education books. This page includes examples of aids and tips for using them.
With more than 1 billion people with disabilities in the world, Microsoft believes that accessibility is essential to delivering on our mission to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” However, our mission doesn’t begin and end with the products we create and the services we offer. It extends to the culture of our workplace and weaving accessibility into the fabric of our company—from hiring people with disabilities, to creating inclusive marketing, and awarding our Accessibility in Action digital badge.
Accessibility guidelines regarding video and audio captions
These guidelines for accessibility concern video and audio content published in Aalto University's websites and social media channels (Youtube, Facebook etc.). Everyone producing and posting video and audio should know these guidelines.
Instructions on how to create and edit captions in Panopto.
Panopto media service
Panopto is a versatile video platform for recording, editing, streaming, and sharing lectures and presentations.
Practical instructions (in Finnish) how documents can be made accessible.
Add speech to your website & apps to make your content available to a larger audience.
The WordPress community and the open source WordPress project is committed to being as inclusive and accessible as possible. WordPress aims to make the WordPress Admin and bundled themes fully WCAG 2.0 AA compliant where possible.
Accessible documents
- Publish always as an HTML webpage if possible; It’s the best way to reach as many users as possible. If you do need to publish a document, it should be in addition to an HTML version.
- Documents like PDFs make your content harder to find, use and maintain. It can be difficult for users to customise them for ease of reading, and they might not work well with assistive technologies like .
- /fi/palvelut/tarkistuslista-oppimateriaalin-ja-digitaalisen-sisallon-saavutettavuudesta
Before sending your email message or sharing your document or spreadsheet, run the to make sure your Microsoft Office content is easy for people of all abilities to read and edit.
is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for the digital preservation of electronic documents. . Library recommends ISO-standardized versions PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-1b & PDF/A-2.
Adobe® InDesign® CC software supports accessible cross-media publication, allowing you to export InDesign documents to ePub, HTML, or accessible PDF. Reduce the time it takes to create PDF documents that people with disabilities can use more effectively. Apply accessibility features within your InDesign document, rather than having to make major changes in Adobe Acrobat® software. PDF tags, alt tags, and the content order you assign stay with the document as you revise it.
2 Accessibility in the web
Aalto.fi platform
All Aalto's websites and services must fulfil the accessibility guidelines. The easiest way to improve your online presence is to create you web pages as part of the aalto.fi site. The aalto.fi platform is by default accessible, and you won't have to think about the technical side, only ensure your content and links follow the guidelines. Contact communications department to learn more about aalto.fi or learn more about the Drupal platform through the links below.
Drupal: Aalto.fi website
Here, you can find instructions on how to make the most out of aalto.fi to visualise your pages and make your content findable. This page is also for the latest Drupal news and events.
All Drupal instructions
This page compiles all Drupal instructions. Drupal is the content management system of the aalto.fi website.
General writing guidelines for articles in English
How to write and edit English-language press releases and news.
Write and add the accessibility statement for your website or service
Reviewing your accessibility statement is an opportunity to check ‘usability’. The accessibility statement is not merely a list of compliance criteria – which in itself is not very helpful. Many users have to navigate the entire page before they can even find the statement. A good statement will add value for diverse users by giving them practical advice on how to improve their experience with web browser features or add-ons, or by explaining how to turn on the captions for videos. Thus, the accessibility statement can become a resource for students, partners and employees rather than purely a legal document.
What is a website and does it meet web accessibility regulations? The new regulations in Europe require each website to have an accessibility statement and, due to the age of the website, sites owned by the same organisation may have a different timeline for complying with the regulations. Source: ECS Accessibility Team (University of Southampton)
Links to guidelines and instructions about accessibility on websites, VLEs and social media
Make your tuition accessible on MyCourses (MyCourses is based on Moodle).
MyCourses Learning Environment
Moodle is designed to provide equal functionality and information to all people. This means that there should be no barriers for people regardless of disabilities, assistive technologies that are used, different screen sizes and different input devices (e.g. mouse, keyboard and touchscreen).
Make your social media presence (such as on LinkedIn) accessible. Online accessibility is crucial for all aspects of your digital strategy.
On LinkedIn, you can add alternative text (alt text) to images you share in your feed or embed in articles. This alt text helps members using screen readers understand what is in the image (the alternative text is not visible to members who do not use reading devices).
LinkedIn can also automatically add alternative text to images that lack it. When you upload an image from a desktop computer, you will be notified if alternative text has been automatically assigned. You will not be notified if you upload an image from a mobile device.
Writing good alternative text - Guidelines from the University of Leicester:
Additional Information:
New videos published on the site need to be captioned
Accessible Aalto
Accessible Aalto
Aalto University strives towards being an accessible, safe and healthy university where research, teaching and services are accessible for all.