Accessible Web Documents
While HTML offers many complex capabilities for graphics, forms, image maps and much more, the documents you create must be usable by your audience. Your documents may be inaccessible to your audience for a number of reasons.
Basic Access
- Limited Computer or Network Access
Information available only on the Web is unavailable to people who do not have Web access. For example, many students do not have computers at home and commute to campus. The only opportunities they have to view class materials on the Web are when they can get to one of the campus computer labs, which are often heavily used during the day.
Consider The Disabled
It is UW policy to provide reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities.
- Visual Disabilities
Visually impaired persons can navigate the Web by using a voice browser which reads the page out-loud or a browser that enlarges the page. Documents relying on imagemaps, tables, or graphics can be uninterpretable for such persons. Also, some types of visual impairments make it difficult for a person to sort out strong patterns or to interpret low contrast graphics. - Motor-Control Disabilities
Some persons have limited motor control of their bodies, making it very difficult for them to do fine control of the position of a mouse or to do combined actions such as exactly positioning the pointer on a screen and simultaneously clicking the mouse.
Making UW Web Sites Accessible To Everyone
Extensive information about accessible Web site design has been assembed on the Making UW Web Sites Accessible To Everyone pages.
Resources
- World Wide Access: Accessible Web Design - UW's DO-IT Program
- The Equal Opportunity Office - University of Washington
- Desiging Universal/Accessible Web Sites - The Trace Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- HTML Unleashed: Creating Widely Accessible Web Pages - Dmitry Kirsanov
- Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) - National Science Foundation
- WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) - Excellent resources, including a detailed tutorial and articles on how to use Web publishing programs such as FrontPage and DreamWeaver to create accessible sites.
-
- WebAIM Quick Tips For Developers
- WebAIM Tutorials - How To Implement The W3C Recommendations
- Cynthia Says - An easy to use program that will help you make Web pages accessible to those with disabilities.
- JAWS - An expensive voice browser
- Window-Eyes - Another voice browser