accessibleweb May 8
  1. Interesting links
    1. Optimal Web Design, Software Usability Research Laboratory, Wichita State University
      http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/default.htm
    2. Update Your Browser
      http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/browsers.html
    3. Zen Garden CSS Style Sheet Design
      http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/
    4. Considering the Color Blind
      http://newmanservices.com/colorblind/default.asp
    5. Vischeck - what your page looks like with different types of color vision
      http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php
  2. Attending, Sheryl Burgstahler, Garth
    1. Helen Remick, hremick@u.washington.edu
    2. Sheryl Burgstahler, sherylb@u.washington.edu
    3. Eric Aislinn, aislinn@chem.washington.edu
    4. Becky Smurr, bsmurr@u.washington.edu
    5. Nancy Weiner, ncw@u.washington.edu
    6. Joan McCarter, jmccarter@ese.washington.edu
    7. Paul Beard, pdb2@u.washington.edu
    8. Matt May, mcmay@w3.org
    9. Terri Dobrich, tdobrich@u.washington.edu
    10. Melody Winkle, mwinkle@cac.washington.edu
    11. Mary Waters, mwaters@ese.washington.edu
    12. Harry Love, hlove@u.washington.edu
    13. Rick Ells, rells@cac.washington.edu
  3. Helen Remick, Assistant Provost for Equal Opportunity, Equal Opportunity Office (EOO)
    1. In higher education accessibility cases, the laws usually referred to are 504 and 508 of Rehabilitation Act
      1. 508 applies to Federal sites
        1. 508 does not have that language tying coverage of the law to receiving federal money
      2. 504 is the major motivation for us
        1. 504 is written to apply to non-federal organizations that receive federal assistance
        2. 504 states that no person will be denied an education because of a disability
        3. The Web used to be an adjunct, now it is very basic to education and research
        4. When 504 was passed, the Web did not exist
    2. Americans with Disabilities Act
      1. Title II covers student programs
      2. Also covered by Titled I
      3. Title III covers public accomodations
    3. A lot of legal action now relating to defining who is disabled
      1. Recent decisions shrink coverage of ADA
      2. Does ADA apply to state government?
        1. States rights issue - if Congress did not specifically say a law applies to state government, are state covered?
      3. Washington state law has a very broad definition of what a disability is
        1. Courts have questioned its somewhat circular definition of what a disability is
        2. Courts have applied it to a wide range of disabilities
      4. When design courses for the Web, we are covered by accessibility law
        1. Example of poor design are state kiosks, which when first released were inaccessible
    4. Precise guidelines coming out of federal organizations
      1. EOO assumes federal guidelines will be used by courts to determine what is reasonable
      2. Vague guidelines for state organizations
      3. Access Board has developed specific guidelines
    5. The Federal government is such a large consumer that it will drive what is available
    6. OEO also worries about UW employees
      1. New video display systems in classrooms do not have the capability to show captioning
      2. Effort to have higher tech resulted in losing accessibility capability
        1. Turns out the old captioning black boxes work with the new displays
    7. Distance learning programs can be very attractive to people with disabilities
    8. Want to give access to all the materials, required and recommended
      1. If its not accessible, take it off the recommended list
    9. What the UW Wants
      1. Word has come down from the top that sites should be accessible
        1. EOO has sent out word repeatedly to Deans and department heads that sites should be accessible
        2. The more we do, the less chance there is that we will have a complaint
      2. Being accessible is a requirement
        1. If you follow section 508 standards, you are fairly well covered. You can argue that you gave it the college try.
          1. Technology changes so fast that we do not want to provide specific descriptions of what to do
          2. It is a performance standard, not a technical standard
      3. If your site is not accessible, it creates legal liability for the University
        1. The UW wants anything that is an official Web page to be accessible
        2. If complaints come, you have to deal with it
        3. Would be very nice to have captioning of all video materials, but it would be expensive
      4. Legal cases can happen
        1. San Jose State had a case filed against it
          1. Cases are handled by Office of Civil Rights
          2. Much better to fix on your own time table rather than under legal pressure
    10. Making your HTML standards-compliant goes a long way toward building accessible sites
      1. Accessiblity is not an added expense, its an inherent part of good Web design, unless you design it out.
        1. Good understanding of HTML is a major job asset, its worth learning the underlying concepts of the language
        2. Doing it right can become part of basic workflow of getting the language right
        3. A factor pushing people to standards-compliant HTML is the new devices for viewing pages, such as PDAs and cell phones
      2. Relationship to W3C guidelines
        1. 508 guidelines stripped out good information structure, flicker information, that are in the W3C guidelines
        2. 508 guidelines are more explicit, if somewhat more narrow
      3. WCAG2 is coming soon, covers a wide range of Web technologies
        1. Covers broader scope, but requires more understanding
        2. European Union is about to accept level one and two WCAG1 guidelines as their standard
      4. CMS systems, authoring tools accessibility guidelines ACAG
        1. CMS is a tool for generating content
        2. Should be a whole environment that makes it easier to do it right than to do things wrong
      5. Web apps should also be like CMS - doing it right should be easy,, gets sent to the browsers should be standards-compliant
    11. Much work to do to reconcile WCAG1, WCAG2, 508
      1. AccessibleWeb@u is a group that can help figure it out
      2. This group is talking about how to actually get it done, given limited budgets, short timelines, rapid pace of change in technologies, and limited staff
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