Activity 2c

C&I 335

Summer, 1998

Donna Holinga

Lincoln School

Springfield, Illinois

The two articles I chose to read pertaining to Web access issues for students with disabilities are "Make Your Web Pages Accessible"by Art Hadley and "Accessible Design for Users With Disabilities"by Jakob Nielsen. I feel the classroom implications of these articles are that teachers must look for web sites which are more user friendly for disabled students and must direct students creating web sites to make these sites more accessible for disabled students.

According to these articles the best design for web pages are those which are simple, well organized, with neutral background color, few graphics, simple tables or charts, if any, and text that is not in columns and has short sentences. Any site which includes graphics should include a brief description of the graphic using alternative text or another page in which the graphic is described, if it is large. If tables are included another page should be linked to it which gives the same information in a text form because in some browsers the information in table collapses. Animation should be avoided, as should forms and frames, because these are difficult for screen readers to interpret.

The article, "Accessible Design for Users with Disabilities," included a section on cognitive disabilities which I found useful because I work with learning disabled students. Although there has not been much research in this area the following implications for use in my classroom was noted:

• the design of the web page should be uncomplicated
• a site map of the page should be provided which includes the path of navigation for the site
• students with dyslexia have problems reading long pages, sites should include margins that provide "white space" on the pages to make them easier to read
• heading for topics should be provided to help visually impaired students and those with cognitive disabilities scan information.
• students who do not spell well will have difficulty using search engines, so, a search engine that includes a spell checker should be used or the teacher should provide a list of possible topics so the student will have access to the correct spelling

These articles provided many suggestions for making web pages more accessible for disabled students. Awareness of this problem and these suggestions will be helpful when locating web sites which I want my students to use and when teaching students to design web pages.

"Accessible Design for Users With Disabilities" http://lunch.ncsa.uiuc.edu/tom/articles/disabled_access.html by Jakob Nielsen . Dr. Nielsen writes a bi-weekly Alertbox column on Web usability. He is a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer and has authored several books on Web Page design and Internet usability. This article was written for Alertbox in October, 1996.