This is a very good point... where do you draw the line, and to whom do you
really want/need the page accessible? To what degree is it up to the
student/client/customer? While there is a lot of grey area, as you mention,
I believe there are a few standards outlining the most helpful adaptations.
One very helpful, inexpensive, and immensely important adaptation is the use
of the alt tag.  Today I used a Lynx browser for the first time, and found
that I missed quite a bit of information if I only received a link to
[transparent image] or some other odd message.  If you don't want to get
bogged down by fuzziness in the W3C standards, try going to Bobby
(http://www.cast.org/bobby/) and running the site in question through the
evaluation.  It will help you to achieve compliance at different levels, so
it's easier to sort out the extremes from the basic.

As for online coursework, I am guessing that Axel was referring not only to
department websites but also to distance education companies (such as
WebCT).  In my mind, there isn't much reason for the professionals in those
companies not to consider accessibility in the construction of their
web-based course software.  This consideration should just be a part of the
construction, really; why eliminate so many potential students by putting up
roadblocks? You are right in that you can't really accommodate EVERYONE, but
I do believe that there are some basic measures (such as the alt tag - good
example) which may be taken, that will tear down a very large number of
roadblocks many webmasters put up in their web page design.  I think Bobby's
a good place to start.

Sarah Sherman
Assistive Technology Program
Computer Guide Program
UW-Stevens Point

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Chapin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 3:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: online discussion about ADA and colleges


If I may, I'd like to comment on why compliance is so low with online course
material.  I'll ignore the two most common, apathy and ignorance although
both can be important particular when looking at course level web pages.

A couple of years ago I shifted from Systems Management to Curricular
Computing Services.  At about the same time I took a course in adaptive
technology. Given the change in my position I decided that I needed to
completely redesign by personal web pages since they had served as a
repository of Unix information that was no longer relevant to my new
position.  I also decided that this would be a great opportunity to show how
to make attractive, accessible pages since I wouldn't have to retrofit
anything.  Now, at least two years later, I've still got the same
inaccessible, and laughingly irrelevant, pages. I ran into the following
problems.

1) Lack of consistent target. One of the most frustrating experiences is
trying to decide what I can get away with.  Variations in the software for
such things reading screens make it difficult to come up with a single
interface that works for all users.  The most obvious case is that some
screen readers have gotten very smart at working with text within tables.
But that's almost a useless feature since I can't take advantage of it
without ignoring everybody who has a different package or even an earlier
version. And the moment you give up tables as a formatting tool, creating
attractive pages becomes a lot more difficult. One has to become an expert
in accessibility software to really know what is and is not actually
supported.

2) Vague standards.  W3C is giving it the old college try, but their
recommended standards are full of works like "should" and  "avoid".  The
section on using tables is a masterpiece of fuzzy standards.

3) Unsupported standards.  How many browsers out there support longdesc,
abbrev, or acronym tags? The first time I tried to build a really accessible
page I very carefully used all these nice features not realizing that they
would just be thrown away.

4) Unhelpful tools.  While getting better, it's still too easy to add an
image to page and simply forget to put in the alt text.

5) Lack of time.  Most college web pages are put together by people who have
neither the expertise, the time to acquire the expertise, or the time to use
the expertise if they had it.  I can count on one hand the number of people
around here who have had the time to learn what the cascading style sheet is
let alone actually use one.  I'm one of those few but my knowledge is too
limited to know how to use them to improve the accessibility of any of my
pages.  And even if I knew, transferring that knowledge to the number of
people involved in the typical decentralized system of an educational
institution is a major undertaking.

We know what the desired goals are.  We want 1) to create attractive pages,
2) to create pages that are easy/inexpensive to create and maintain, and 3)
to create pages that are accessible.

Pick two.

-----
Paul Chapin
Curricular Computing Specialist
Amherst College
413 542-2144