School of Education

Internet Technologies At Work

Chapter 9: Accessibility

After completing Chapter 9, you will know how to:

Section 508

In the United States, Web accessibility is a right that is guaranteed by law under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1998. According to the Section 508 law, a Web site is accessible when users with special needs can access it as well as people without disabilities. Section 508 consists of sixteen Web accessibility rules, all of which must be met in order for a Web site to be considered accessible. Research-based Web design and accessibility guidelines are online at usability.gov.

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

In 1997, the W3C launched the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which coordinates the Web’s official efforts to achieve accessibility. WAI went right to work on HTML Version 4.0, which introduced new mechanisms for making Web page elements accessible. To provide Web authors with guidance in using the new accessibility features, the WAI issued a set of guidelines called the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0. These guidelines influenced the formulation of the Section 508 guidelines. The work of the WAI is documented at www.w3.org/WAI.

Showcase

The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at the WGBH Boston public television station is an excellent source for learning about best practices of accessibility in all things media. By following the links at ncam.wgbh.org, you can read about the latest innovations and best practices.

End of Chapter Labs

Lab Project 9.1: Designing Accessible Web Sites

Imagine that the government notified your school or company that federal funding will stop in six months if you do not bring your Web site into compliance with the Section 508 Web accessibility rules. In response to this warning, your institution went through the process of bringing the site into compliance. Your employer is concerned, however, that the site will fall back out of compliance if continued work does not comply with accessibility guidelines. To address this concern, your employer has assigned you the job of creating an accessibility checklist that Web developers must follow at your site whenever they create or update site content. Use your Word processor to create this checklist. In deciding what to include on the checklist, consider the following issues:

  1. Textual Description for Non-text Elements. Section 508 requires that you must provide a textual description for every non-text element onscreen. Consider the kinds of non-text elements at your Web site, and create the appropriate checkpoints.
  2. Forms. You must code forms in such a manner that users who do not have a mouse can use the computer keyboard to navigate, fill-in, and submit the form. Be sure to include checkpoints for the <label> tags, for attributes, and Submit button that every form must have.
  3. PDF Accessibility. Include a checkpoint that reminds your fellow employees to use heading styles when word processing documents that will be mounted at your site as PDF files. In the PDF file, these headings are tagged as bookmarks, which enable users with assistive devices to jump to different sections and subsections in the document.
  4. Accessibility by Design. As you learned in this chapter, good Web design principles can obviate the need for some of the Section 508 rules. By requiring your authors to use client-side image maps, for example, you can avoid needing to create a checkpoint requiring redundant text links for server-side maps.

If your instructor asked you to hand in the checklist, make sure you put your name at the top of the document, then copy it onto a disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.

Lab Project 9.2: Evaluating Web Site Accessibility

Imagine that your employer has heard about Web accessibility tools that can automatically scan all of the pages at a Web site and report violations of Section 508 or WCAG accessibility guidelines. Your employer wants to get one of these tools to help insure that the pages at your school or company Web site are compliant. The stakes are high because of the federal funding that your organization stands to lose if the site violates the Section 508 rules. Your employer has asked you to recommend which tool your organization should adopt for periodically scanning the site for accessibility violations. Use your word processor to write an essay in which you discuss the alternatives and recommend how your organization should go about evaluating Web site accessibility. In developing this recommendation, consider the following issues:

  1. Alternative Tools. In this chapter, you learned about three tools for assessing the accessibility of a Web site, namely, Bobby, LIFT, and WebKing. There are about thirty other tools you can consider. The W3C keeps track of these tools at www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools. Go there to read the summaries of what these tools do, and make a list of the tools you want to consider. In your essay, list the tools you considered, explain why you chose the tool you decided to recommend, and state the reasons why you rejected the others.
  2. Authoring Environments. Some of the accessibility tools plug in to work with certain Web development tools. In this chapter, for example, you learned that there are versions of LIFT for Dreamweaver and FrontPage, while WebKing plugs in to IBM’s WebSphere Studio Application Developer. Read the tool summaries at www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools to find out whether there are other accessibility tools that plug in to specific Web development environments. If there are plug-ins for the Web authoring tools used at your site, include them on your list of alternatives to be considered
  3. Trial Versions. As you learned in this chapter, there are trial versions of Bobby, LIFT, and WebKing. Find out whether trial versions exist for other alternatives you are considering. In your recommendation, consider proposing a trial period during which you test the tool before adopting it for production use at your Web site.
  4. Prioritizing Errors. Go to www.section508.gov and read about the STEP508 tool. Consider whether STEP508 would be useful at your Web site. In your recommendation, state the reasons why you decided to include or forego STEP508 at this time.

If your instructor asked you to hand in the recommendation, make sure you put your name at the top of the essay, then copy it onto a disk or follow the other instructions you may have been given for submitting this assignment.