Bobby and Accesibility:
I ran Bobby 2.0 on Netscape Communicator 4.0 on all my Web pages to check them for accesibility. All my pages were given approval with a four star rating. I did have some minor accessibility problems with my index.html and my activities.html. All of my other pages had zero accessibility and compatibility problems. The minor problems I have on my index and activities pages are the table used for page formatting and the line5.gif as a background image in the template that I used for these pages.
Alternative Page Designs For Students With Disibilities
I found several interesting sites on this topic. One of the sites I found the most intriguing was the Sun Microsystems' Enabling Technologies Program page. It focused on JAVA applications and how they can be used for a variety of disabilities. For example keyboard shortcuts can be programmed easily for physically handicapped individuals using JAVA. Sun appears to be dedicated to researching the many ways JAVA and JAVA based technologies can help disabled people make a connection with the computer and the web. I look forward to following the developments that occur with this technology because I beleive it is something that can greatly impact the classroom teacher (much like html).
Another excellent site with numerous page design strategies is the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) web site. The misson of the WAI is to "lead the Web to its full potential promoting a high degree of usability for people with disabilities". Specifically the site provides information about HTML page authoring to improve the accessibility of web sites. Some of the suggestions cover structure, navigation and alternate formatting. Structural suggestions include making sure that pages are readable and usable without style sheets for browsers that do not support them, and avoiding blinking and scrolling text.
A third site that I thought was of particular interest to me as a science teacher was the Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) site. This site has numerous resources and links. From this site I accessed an article titled ADAPTED COMPUTERS AS LABORATORY AIDS. This article highlighted the use of computer based lab tools such as sensors and probes to aid disabled people in the collection of data. Voice recognition sofware can be programed to help students with limited upper body control to record data and perform basic calculations for interpretations. I have had some disabled students in my classroom that could have benefited from such equipment.