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Issue 32, Winter 2005
by Andrew McGlone
This quarter you may have noticed some changes in WWU homepage. In an effort to address issues of accessibility, ATUS Web Services, has completed a redesign.
What is Accessibility?
Accessibility is defined by two essential perspectives: the designer and the target audience. Accessibility in relation to the target audience has to do with how users with disabilities go about accessing digital content and materials. Accessibility in relationship to web designers involves what proactive strategies web designers employ to make their pages and content viewable on assistive technology devices used by individuals with disabilities.
Why is Accessibility Important?
Again there are schools of thought in regard to why web accessibility is important. The first is prime facie. Making institutional services accessible is the law. The United States, Canada, and the European Union have enacted many legal mandates for accessibility which are always expanding in scope. Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act articulates in specifics the standards for web pages maintained by federal agencies in regard to accessibility. Similarly state, local and higher education institutions are constantly reviewing laws in addressing issues of accessibility. The University of Wisconsin at Madison, for example, has implemented an Accessibility Policy mandating that all pages maintained by the university conform to all Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Ultimately, disregard for this legal requirement could lead to potential litigation and in several instances has.
More practically, obstacles to accessibility in web pages inherently limit the potential audience your message might reach. Web developers frequently speak of a responsibility, to Ôdo the right thing’ in regard to web pages. Doing the right thing and observing accessibility guidelines guarantees that more people will receive your message, which is everyone’s objective.
WWU Web Page Changes
We have begun the process of updating all University web content to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. To achieve this, we have implemented several rules and practices. They include:
Strong separation for structure and presentation — HTML was never intended to be a presentation medium. Examples of this are using tables to position content in a particular position on a page. Cascading style sheets are where presentation and design should be expressed. Not only does this lead to cleaner code, it also leads to smaller files sizes and faster downloading.
Validation — The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) www.w3.org provides many useful resources for designing web pages including code validators. These validation tools will tell you what is and is not valid in your code by simply providing the URL to a page on your website. In discrete terms it will provide you with rich information regarding how to make your web pages more accessible.
Keep it simple — Third party browser extensions such as Flash provide the ability to develop very rich media, but they are frequently inaccessible and cause longer download times. We’ve removed the Flash element from the WWU homepage proper in favor of leveraging Flash on another, less frequently traveled page. Removing this obstacle while still maintaining linkage to the resources creates the best of both worlds.
What Resources are Available?
There are a myriad of websites that provide guidance on Web Accessibility. Listed below are a few sites. Web Services makes available to you the University’s web template, which has been verified for accessibility. If you would like to learn more about this topic or share information feel free to give us a call in Web Services 650-6355 or email webhelp@wwu.edu.
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