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Courses
Courses
Choosing a course is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make! View our courses and see what our students and lecturers have to say about the courses you are interested in at the links below.
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University Life
University Life
Each year more than 4,000 choose University of Galway as their University of choice. Find out what life at University of Galway is all about here.
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About University of Galway
About University of Galway
Since 1845, University of Galway has been sharing the highest quality teaching and research with Ireland and the world. Find out what makes our University so special – from our distinguished history to the latest news and campus developments.
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Colleges & Schools
Colleges & Schools
University of Galway has earned international recognition as a research-led university with a commitment to top quality teaching across a range of key areas of expertise.
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Research & Innovation
Research & Innovation
University of Galway’s vibrant research community take on some of the most pressing challenges of our times.
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Business & Industry
Guiding Breakthrough Research at University of Galway
We explore and facilitate commercial opportunities for the research community at University of Galway, as well as facilitating industry partnership.
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Alumni & Friends
Alumni & Friends
There are 128,000 University of Galway alumni worldwide. Stay connected to your alumni community! Join our social networks and update your details online.
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Community Engagement
Community Engagement
At University of Galway, we believe that the best learning takes place when you apply what you learn in a real world context. That's why many of our courses include work placements or community projects.
Accessibility & LanguageT4 Training
T4 Training
The first port of call for all web editors at the University of Galway should be the T4 Training Course. You should pay particular attention to why you should use correct headings (H1, H2 etc in sequence), the 'Adding Images' section (as it covers alternative text) and how to create accessible tables.
See the social media guides for more about alt text, but, in short, alt text (alt tags and alt descriptions) is the text that will appear instead of an image on your website if the image fails to load on a user's screen. Alt text also helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers. For instance, if you embed an image into a news items that's advertising an upcoming event, you should ensure you include alt text if that image is the only source of information (e.g. when or where the event is taking place) on that webpage.
Everything T4 users need to know about web accessibility
Web accessibility in a nutshell
Public service websites need to be available to absolutely everyone
Example: Nearly everone pays their car tax online. Imagine if that website's creators couldn't be bothered to add a 'Fully Electric' engine type to the site - even though users needed to select the engine type before it would calculate the price.
If this happened, 1 in 7 new car owners would be affected unfairly. Of course, something like that would never actually happen - no self-respecting website editor would ever descriminate against that many people just to save themselves an extra minute of editing!
And if a problem, affecting that many people, were ever discovered in their website, the editors would presumably rush to fix the problem as soon as possible.
We all would - or so we'd like to think. But the reality is that 1 in 7 people, using your web pages, relies on some kind of assistive technology to access that information. And if you're not making your web content work with this technology, you're denying them access to the public service - just like in our example, above.
Accessibility is not just about blind or deaf users
Many people can have invisible things (such as dyslexia, ADHD, light/glare sensitivity, headache), which may make them choose to use assistive software, to read the web page to them. Others may have difficulties with fine motor control, or a broken arm, so they need to navigate the page using the keyboard instead of a mouse. Some users may have slightly impaired vision (which could be caused by cataracts, glaucoma, diabetes, or just because they're getting older) so they prefer to zoom the screen a little to read it.
Making web pages accessible is normally an involved, complicated task but, thankfully, the University's CMS does most of the work for us.
There are only a few things that editors need to remember to do.
Accessibility improves your website for everyone
Accessibility features can be useful to able-bodied users as well as those who rely on them. A kerbside ramp may be designed for wheelchair users but it's also useful for prams, bikes, and older (or injured) pedestrians.
Similarly, web accessibility provides advantages for all users. For example, closed captions on web videos are essential for deaf people but they also let anyone watch videos with the volume down when they're in a library or on a train.
It's the law - and you (personally) can be fined for non-compliance
Web accessibility is a legal requirement for public bodies under EU and Irish law. Failure to comply can mean a €3,000 fine, up to 12 months in prison, or both - for the person responsible for the web content (and a fine for the University also).
The NDA actively monitors all Univeristy and public service websites, on behalf of the Government of Ireland, to gauge our compliance with Irish and EU law. A random 400 web pages from this University's website are assessed by them, each week.
By law, intranet content must be accessible too - so even if it's not for public consumption, you need to make your web pages, word documents, PDF's, and spreadsheets accessible if you share them with others via the web, Teams, or SharePoint.
And it's the University's policy
The University of Galway is committed to Universal Design & Accessibility - QA182 University of Galway Universal Design & Accessibility Policy states that (among other things) everything we put on our website (or procure for it) will be accessible (to WCAG-AA standards).
The University reserves the right to remove your web content, without warning or notification, if it does not comply with the WAI-AA standards we are committed (and legally obliged) to uphold.
