Website  Accessibility

What is website accessibility?

Accessibility, according to the Princeton University Wordnet, is “the quality of being at hand when needed” or “the attribute of being easy to meet or deal with”. Traditionally when referring to disability services, it has been used to refer to physical access to buildings and architecture to individuals in wheelchairs, using crutches, or with other mobility impairments. However, in terms of online content, such as a website, course document, PowerPoint presentation, etc., the industry uses the word to refer to how well a website will operate in accordance with individuals with disabilities, using specialized technology designed to work around barriers such as blindness, deafness, mobility impairments, and other detriments.

Website accessibility, however, is different from “usability”, a popular term in website design to describe the overall functionality, usefulness, intuitiveness, and standards adherence of a website. Ultimately, a good website will be both usable and accessible.

What makes a website INaccessible?

In the most basic of senses, a website is inaccessible if it relies on a method of content or presentation that is only usable by able-bodied individuals. For example, if a picture of a  map shows bus routes by color, and an individual who is color blind tries to plan their bus route based on the website with this map, they will be unable to determine which route is best for them. Not to mention the fact that someone who is blind and tries to use technology to have the text of the screen spoken to them. Fortunately, techniques and standards exist to help web developers make these, and other barriers, work for individuals with disabilities.

Why should I make my website accessible?

A myriad of federal and state laws, coupled with the eventuality of OSU System-wide policies and procedures, give several good reasons to build websites that work for persons with disabilities, but the legality of such a decision is only one justification. Making sure that a website conforms to accessibility standards is also the “Right” thing to do, in that it helps to “level the playing field” for students with disabilities, providing equal access rather than special privileges or reduced standards. It’s also the “Progressive” thing to do, in the sense that just like elevators are useful to all people, or automatic doors and ramps can help more than just someone in a wheelchair, electronic accessibility provides access to all, such as people who use different browser technologies or might surf the web from a PDA or mobile phone.

Should I worry about website accessibility “after the fact?”

The best technique for designing a website accessibly is to consider accessibility principles from the very beginning of the design process. This means taking a proactive approach to accessibility, considering how various individuals (including able-bodied ones) will use the website, page layout, and organization. Unfortunately, retroactively making a website accessible can be much more difficult and time-consuming, so the proactive method is best. As an analogy, architects wouldn’t design a building without an elevator or a wheelchair ramp until after it was requested, but instead create the building literally from the ground up with these features seamlessly integrated. The overall impact to labor, materials, and effort costs is negligible, compared to retrofitting an elevator into an already standing building. The same is very true with websites.

What tools are available?

Several tools are available to OSU, including an enterprise package available from the HiSoftware Corporation, which is a suite of utilities to assist with the development of sites, captioning and transcription of media, and the ongoing monitoring of website changes for accessibility. More information about these tools and how to obtain them is available from our website.

What Can I do to Make My Website Accessible?

Several tools and information sites exist to assist developers with making a website accessible, and many of these are low-cost or even free. Here are a few good resources to check for accessibility:

·        http://validator.w3.org/:  A free site that will help insure a website conforms to the standards, or rules governing website design, with helpful assistance on how to fix common problems.

·        http://webaim.wave.org/: A free site that will help identify common accessibility issues on a page, including images that need textual descriptions, portions of the page that are out of order when read aloud, and many other “checkpoints.”

·        http://www.ok.gov/webaim/: A free site to Oklahoma state agency employees with in-depth training seminars and information available regarding accessibility in a self-paced, online model.

As an added measure, Student Disability Services will be excited to work with your developers in every step of the website creation process to insure its accessibility, all you have to do is ask.