Michele Jacobs

Tri-City Elementary

Buffalo, IL

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Page Author Check List- Version 8 - Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines

Compiled by Gregg C. Vanderheiden, Ph.D. and Wendy A. Chisholm, M.S. in affiliation with the Trace R and D Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison for the Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines Working Group

http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/html_guidelines/authorcl.html

This site lists guidelines that should be followed when creating a web site that is accessible to all readers. The guidelines reflect several areas and include: Style sheets, Images and Image maps, Applets and scripts, Audio and video,Text, Lists and outlining, Tables, Links, Frames, and User input forms. These are all guidelines that the author of the web site should take into consideration before creating the web site. The conclusion page was very helpful in that it lists "tips and tricks to further enhance the usability of pages" and "good web site design practices". They are careful to caution that even after using these guidelines it is important to test the site with several different tools.( It should be noted that this site is an "advanced draft copy".)

OUTPUT- Adapting Output

This site is based on a presentation on Internet Access created by Paul Hendrix of Center for Accessibility Technology and Mike Birkmire of LINC.

http://www.el.net/CAT/access5.html

This site discusses the options available to modify the visual output of the computer. The utility programs that they suggest are: Biggy and Fat Cursor which are both Macintosh shareware products that enlarge the cursor for better viewing. They also list the products available for PC users which are MetaMouse, ToggleMouse, and Biggy. There are also products that can enlarge the entire image that is displayed using screen magnification tools such as: inLarge for Mac and ZoomText, LPWindows, and Magic for Windows. They caution that the use of these products can make it difficult to keep track of where you are at on the screen since only a small portion can be viewed at any one time. Altering the color of text and background is another alternative they suggest to produce more of a contrast. They also discuss other topics such as: supplementing visual output and replacing visual output.

Designing Access to WWW Pages

This site was designed by the Alliance for Technology Access (ATA) and is a network of community-based resource centers dedicated to providing information and support services to children and adults with disabilities.

http://www.ataccess.org/design.html#vision

This site discusses vision, hearing, learning, or cognitive barriers and how to make the web pages more accessible for these disabilities. They provide links to further resources as well. One area that it includes is vision barriers, which I am very interested in. The tips include: keeping the screen uncluttered, leaving space around items, only one hyperlink to any one line, avoiding tiled background and dark or bright colors, there is a need for a contrast between the background and the text, and providing alternative text to any images that are displayed.

These sites were very useful to me as I get ready to customize my teaching strategies to meet the needs of the student in my room that is vision impaired.