Create Accessible Web Sites
Creating
Web Pages
Study Plans Home
Why Web Sites must be Accessible
Section 508: The Road to Accessability: http://www.section508.gov./index.html
Accessibility, section 508, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act: http://www.websitetips.com/accessibility/
Accessible Web Design: http://www.washington.edu/doit/Resources/web-design.htmlThe Open Directory Project provides a list of links in their web directory on website accessability resources on the internet.
ADA
(Americans with Disabilities Act) Technical Assistance Program: http://www.adata.org/
This is a federally funded program that provides information, training, and technical
assistance ot businesses and people with disabilities and ADA compliance.
The
Americans with Disabilities Act: http://consumerlawpage.com/brochure/disab.shtml
The Alexander Law Firm provides an online brochure called "the Americans
with Disabilities Act questins and Answers."
Americans
With Disabilities Document Center: http://janweb.icdi.wvu.edu/kinder/
This site provides a complete set of ADA-related documentation including reference
sheets and explanations of each title.
Chart on Disability:
1996: http://www.infouse.com/disabilitydata/chartbook.choices.html
This site tells how many people had disabilities in the United States in 1996,
the types of disabilities they had, and these disabilities affect their ability
to work.
Disability Statistics Center: http://www.dsc.ucsf.edu/UCSF/spl.taf?_from=default
This site has a search engine that searches by disability. It provides statistics
on people affected by disabilities and their families.
Persons
with Disabilities: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/diswpa01.htm
World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons
Some things to keep in mind about potential website users
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Places that help people write accessible websites
About
Color Blindness: http://www.delamare.unr.edu/cb/
This site provides indepth descriptions of various types of color blindness and
how a web page can be designed for color blind readers.
Add
Math to Web pages with EzMath: http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/EzMath/
" The Web lacks an effective means for embedding mathematical expressions
in Web pages." This site remedies the problem and tells how to make math
notation accessible.
Amaya: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ is the World Wide Web Consortium's own Web frowser that also doubles as an authoring tool within the same window. Amaya servews an important function in the Web deveiloment arena because the W3C pases many of its new Web-based protocols through Amaya. Amaya supposts new W3C protocol develoment and therefore is a good GUI browser to have around. it contains a Zoom feature in the View menu (Alt + or Alt - on the keyboards) that enables users to increase the size of text and graphics as they appear on a Web page. Amaya includes a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing interface. Assuming you have write access to a particular Web page, you can first browse a Web page and then edit it within the same window simply y single-clicking within the editing window. however, the authoring interface is not accessible to windows screen readers.
A-Prompt:
http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/
"A-Prompt (Accessibility Prompt) has been developed to assist Web authors
in improving the accessibility and usability of HTML documents."
Dive
Into Accessibility-30 days to a more accessible web site: http://diveintoaccessibility.org/
This
book answers two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web
site more accessible?" The second question is "How can I make my web
site more accessible?"
Effective Color Contrast: Designing for People with Partial
Sight and Color Deficiencies:
http://www.lighthouse.org/color_contrast.htm
Useful guide to designing for people with partial sight and color
deficiencies.
Guidelines for Designing a Good Web Site for ESL Students: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kelly-Guidelines.html
HARMONY (Horizontal Action for the
Harmonisation of Accessible Structured Documents) Project: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/teo/docarch/projecten/harmony/harmony.en.htm
"Guidelines for the production of accessible web pages can be found here."
A few of the guidelines are:
IBM
Guidelines for Writing Accessible Applications Using 100% Pure Java:
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/snsjavag.html
Inclusive Web Design: http://www.utoronto.ca/atrc/rd/slideshows/inclusive.html
This site has compiled information on accessibility into an online slide show.
Low-tech
features that can make it easier for a student to read text from the computer
are the background and font color. Changing the background color and the text
color is easy and something you might want to experiment with to see if it helps
the students.
This black and yellow combination can be
helpful for students with visual problems.
Students with syndromes such as Aspergers find the pink background and yellow
font color beneficial. It can also be helpful with students with ADHD. Along the
same principal, pink highlighters can be very helpful.
Yellow tends not to be helpful for most students with attention difficulties.
There is also colored tape that can be purchased to lay over text
and moved around to highlight main ideas or answer to questions presented. This
type of tape can be reused and does not hurt the text. There are also erasable
highlighters.
Media Access Generator (MAGpie): http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/
The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) has developed two authoring
tools for making Web- and CD-ROM-based multimedia materials
accessible to persons with disabilities.
Microsoft Accessibility: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/default.htm
Oregon State University Web Accessiblity Guidelines: http://tap.orst.edu/Policy/web.html
Rehabilitation
Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America: http://www.resna.org/
RESNA is an interdisciplinary association of people with a common interest in
technology and disability. Their purpose is to improve the potential of people
with disabilities to achieve their goals through the use of technology.
Resources
for Developing an Accessible Web Sites: http://www.independencefirst.org/accessiblewebsite.asp
FROM:
IndependenceFirst - The Resource for People with Disabilities
Speech-Friendly
Website Design: http://karn.ohiolink.edu/philosophy/speech_friendly.html
A
strong list of links on the broad issue of accessability may be found here.
Sun Microsystems Accessibility Program: http://www.sun.com/access/
W3C
Web Accessibility Initiative: http://www.w3.org/WAI/
" WAI, in coordination with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility
of the Web through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools,
education and outreach, and research and development." Tells how to make
a website accessibile.
WebABLE: http://www.webable.com/
"WebABLE is a leading provider of Web accessibility technology, consulting,
and training. Our work ensures that our client's Web sites are fully accessible
to people with disabilities and in compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation
Act." Laws and ideas for making websites accessable can be found at this
site.
Web Accessibility Learning Modules: http://www.csufresno.edu/webaccess/learningmodules/
Test to see if a website is accessible
Whether you're
building a personal Web site or developing a corporate intranet, you'll never
get anyone to visit your site if the quality of the site is poor. Almost without
exception, users click the browser Stop button if they have to wait more than
a minute or so for a site to load. Users take similiar action when your Web site
links are broken. Your site's validity comes into question.
The lack of accessibility
plays into the Web site integraty factor too. If your site is not accessible,
you are sure to lose millions of visitors - not just those who have disabilities,
but also those who work with and otherwise support the accssibility community.
Performing a Web site accessibility review is one
stage of the Web site validation process.
Essentially you can perform one
of the following two types of Web site accessibility review:
Whether you perform a quick review or a through, top-to-bottom review of your site, it is important to verigy that your site is accessible to people with disabilities.
Clean
up your web pages with HTML TIDY: http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
Not only will this site clean up your HTML to insure that you are producing valid
markup code, but it will offer you advice on how to make corrections to your code
for accessibility. HTML Tidy uses the HTML 4.0 specification guidelines as its
standard.
Once you have validated your HTML, use the Boby or LIFT online web accessibilty validation services. Both these services were designed to imporve the accessibilty and usability of your web site. Both also use the W3C SAI Content Accessibility Guidelines as the basis for validation.
Welcome to Bobby3.2:CAST(Center for Applied Special
Technology): http://www.cast.org/Bobby/Bobby311.cfm
"Bobby is a tool for Web page authors. It will help them identify changes
to their pages needed so users with disabilities can more easily use their Web
pages. For example, a blind user will be aided by adding a sound track to a movie,
and a hard-of-hearing user will be aided by a written transcript of a sound file
on a Web page. Bobby will recommend that these be added if they do not already
exist."
Bobby is gaining worldwide acceptance as a legitimate validation
service. To review the accessibilty of your Web site with Bobby, you can quickly
review a single page against a single criterion, review a single page for multiple
criteria, or install and run Bobby as an application on
your local system and review a complete Web site (local or remote).
UsableNet's
LIFT: http://www.usablenet.com/
"UsableNet's
software tools empower web developers to quickly and efficiently test and fix
their websites to comply with industry standards, including section 508 of the
American Disabilities Act and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) priority one guidelines."
LIFT focuses primarily on the usabilty of your seb site, looking for color usage,
use of frames, browser compataibility, use of keywords, image size and text descriptions.
LIFT not only tells you what to fix and why, but it shows you exactly how to fix
your code. A simple cut and past will do the trick.
NIST
Web Metrics: http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/
"The objective of the NIST Web Metrics Testbed is to explore the feasibility
of a range of tools and techniques that support rapid, remote, and automated testing
and evaluation of website usability."
W3C HTML
Validation Service: http://validator.w3.org/
The W3C provides an HTML 4.0 validation service that verifies proper HTML accessibility
coding.
Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content
Accessibility:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist
ALTifier
Web Accessibility Enhancement Tool: http://www.vorburger.ch/projects/alt/
ALTifier automatically examines your Web page for images and assists you in the
creatin of alternative text for the image. It is a tool that ou can use to automate
the task of including alternative (ALT attribute) text to images, image maps,
objects, and frames on your Web site. ALTifier is comprised of a toolkit with
various modules, including an autonomous enhancing filter and graphical user interface
GUI) tool. Essentially, ALTifier scans your Web site for HTML coding constructs
like IMG or OBJECT, and checks for the presence of assosciated text descriptions.
After scanning your Web page, ALTifier than implements appropriate ALT text description
using a protoclol that guesses what the text should be based on document context.
Dr.
HTML: http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
Doctor HTML is a form-based Web page and site validation
service. It is a fee-based site that enables guests to test up to four URLs. Doctor
HTML performs analysis on spelling, image bandwidth and size, HTML structure,
image anlysis, table structure, hyperlink verification, and form structure.
This
site began in March 1998 and was created by Janet Luch.
Email questions and comments to: studyplans@yahoo.com
.