Jennison,
I put together a summarization
and recommendations
to my dean after getting
comments and responses
last week from this listserv.
It is as follows and I think it
will answer a lot of
questions for you as it did for
me.
Jack Clevenger, Coordinator
Disability Resources and
Services
Mesa Community College
Mesa, Arizona
YOU WROTE:
I know this question has been
answered here before, so I
apologize in
advance. Does Section 508 only
apply to government agencies, or
does it
extend to publically funded
higher educational institutions?
Also, which federal/state laws
(if any) speak explicitly to
higher
education needing to make their
campus
computing/internet/eLearning
accessible? Here in Canada,
folks often throw ADA and 508
around as
covering campuses in this
regard, but as I understand it,
it is still up
to individual schools to what
extent to which aspects of their
IT they
will make accessible.
I have also heard that
individual states have passed
specific laws that
speak to access to eLearning.
Can someone clarify whether this
is true,
and if so, which states have
done this?
Thanks,
Jennison
THE RESPONSES & RECOMMENDATION:
The responses and
recommendations
were listed in terms of
priority, short term
and long term. The key to all
this is that "it
is the right thing to do" and
not that of a
defensive posture to avoid
getting an
OCR complaint to resolve.
The recommendations will not
work unless
the administration mandate all
the webmasters
to implement the short and long
term
recommendations.
SHORT TERM:
1. The home page and the
following sites need to
be reworked (if not already) to
be ADA compliant.
Main page - the 5 main sections
of the web:
Student Central, Employees,
Community;
the Academic Department Page;
the Contacts page;
the Library; and
the Student Services.
Also -- restricting ANYTHING new
from going online that
is not ADA accessable needs to
be discussed. There are
too many folks who will just
continue doing things the
old way if someone does not say
they HAVE to stop and
reconsider.
2. Correct and make compliant
the top 20% number of
web sites that are "hit" by the
student public. Your
college's webmaster should be
able to pull up the
stats.
LONG TERM:
1. Get into place accessible
design practices for the
next generation web resources.
It is a lot easier to
build in accessibility features
at the design stage
of web resources than trying to
fix them after they have
been designed
2. Whatever
guidelines/standards we might
adopt, they
should be viewed as a starting
point for assuring
accessiblity.
In addition to applying
guidelines/standards, a system
needs to be in place for making
accommodations when
a specific individual with a
disability cannot access
content of our web pages. Have
that by emphasizing to
your faculty to make the
announcement on the first day of
class that students that have
disabilities identify themselves
to the instructor and be
referred to your disability
services
office/person.
PS: This was what I sent to an
authoritative listserv
(EASI - Equal Access to Software
and Information)
that is made up of participants
that are experts
in information accessibility in
postsecondary
education.
> Hi all,
> Our college's teaching and
technology just had
a meeting today with its
major focus and agenda
being web site
accessibility. The major
question
came up for me to ask the
experts from this listserv
as follows:
> Given that each of our
Maricopa community colleges have
hundreds, if not
thousands, of web pages
(including courses
on the web. This all
comes after several years of
development
and .....recently the
staff and faculty are now
realizing the
responsibility to have the
web sites/pages be ADA/508
compliant.
> The question is this: In
what order of the web
sites/pages
do we need to ensure are
accessible. We know that we
definitely
need to have the home page
be 508 compliant along with its
links.
THE RESPONSES:
*
As you say, the home page and
immediate links
should be done immediately. I'd
suggest looking
at the pages that are most
important to the
students be next. There are
probably some pages
that are rarely visited.
One guideline might be this: the
ADA doesn't
say that *everything* must be
accessible, it
says that all *services* must be
accessible.
So, if there is information that
is on the
website that is not easily
accessible to the
students in some other way, that
*must* be
accessible now. (DENNIS ANSON)
*
I think the number one issue is
to get into place
accessible design practices for
the next generation
web resources. It is alot
easier to build in accessibility
features at the design stage of
web resources than trying
to fix them after they have been
designed. I would make
that the number onw priority!
After you know what you want as
design practices then you can
go back and see if it worth
trying to repair existing
resources
or just totally redesign them.
Most times repairing existing
web pages to meet accessibility
guidelines takes more work than
just redesigning the resources
using your accessible design
practices.
Repairing web resources to meet
508 or some other guidelines
make make the pages technically
accessible, but often
functionally
inaccessible to people with
disabilities. (JON GUNDERSON-he
is
considered to be the worldwide
expert on web site
accessibility)
*
This is a common problem, and
exemplifies Jon Gunderson's
mantra:
it's better to have
accessibility designed in rather
than added on.
It can be a Vsignificant
challenge, depending on how
poorly designed
the current web pages are.
I think it is important for all
of our campuses to remember
that,
whatever guidelines/standards we
might adopt, they should be
viewed
as a starting point for assuring
accessiblity. In addition to
applying guidelines/standards, a
system needs to be in place for
making accommodations when a
specific individual with a
disability
cannot access content of our web
pages.
From a developer viewpoint,
picking the low-hanging fruit
(the easy
stuff to fix) might look like a
good approach, but what if the
things
that present the greatest
barriers are also the things
that are hardest
to fix. For example, an early
version of ABC.com opened onto a
full
screen graphic with no text at
all, that was a server side map.
Completely inaccessible. Fixing
the things on subsidiary pages
wouldn't help overall
accessibility because a user
could never get
to those pages, although the
designer might be able to report
that
90% of our pages have been
fixed. (DENNIS ANSON)
*
The procedure that was used by
the Department of Justice to
correct inaccessible web pages
was to use the hits that each
site received as the basis for
which sites to correct first.
They started by correcting the
20% most active sites. This
was work that was setup with a
time line, ( I believe one year
or less) The accommodation
procedure was for the
implementation
of Sec. 508. I am not implying
that all sites should not be
accessible, but that one must
begin where there is likely to
be the largest impact. This
should be combined with a large
media campaign to staff and
faculty about web accessibility
requirements. Of course, any
student taking a class that does
not have an accessible page can
still sue and/or file an OCR
complaint, a fact that should be
brought home to administrators
and instructors. Now, since we
both are in Arizona, you do
know that post secondary
institutions in Arizona are not
covered
by Sec 508. We are still under
Sec 504 which has be interpreted
by OCR as meaning that web sites
must be accessible to the W3C,
Level One Priority. I used the
Dept of Justice as a model
because of your concerns with
the size of the task that
confronts you. (RICHARD JONES -
ASU)
*
Again, I want to emphasize that
there is a difference between
fixing web resources to comply
with an accessibility standard
and designing for accessibility
by using the right technologies.
I would encourage people to
figure out the markup practices
that
they want for accessibility and
then decide whether repair or
redesign is the best choice and
the most efficient use of
resources to achieve the
accessibility goals. (JON
GUNDERSON)
+
Last week at the Accessing
Higher Ground conference in
Boulder,
I picked up a flyer from WebAim
(www.webaim.org) that describes
a five-step web remediation
process: "the fast track to
accessibilty." Here it is in
outline:
1. Evaluate your current site.
2. Fix the easiest issues first.
3. Fix your templates.
4. Fix all HTML-related issues.
5. Fix all non-HTML issues.
One of the easiest fixes is also
one of the most important:
Make sure that all of your
images have "alt" text. The text
should be brief but descriptive
of the image's purpose.
Unimportant decorative graphics
and spacer images still
need alt text, but it should be
empty, like this: alt="".
Complex images, such as charts
and graphs, should be explained
in detail elsewhere on the page
(or on another page), in
addition to having alt text. One
common way of linking to
another page is to create a "D"
link. Simply put the letter
D after the image and link the D
to a separate page with a
detailed description of the
graphic. The flyer goes into
more
detail. (ALAN CANTOR)
I think it is important for all
of our campuses to remember
that, whatever
guidelines/standards we might
adopt, they
should be viewed as a starting
point for assuring accessiblity.
In addition to applying
guidelines/standards, a system
needs
to be in place for making
accommodations when a specific
individual with a disability
cannot access content of our
web pages. (SHERYL BURGSTAHLER)
*
508 compliant may not get you
what you need as far as
accessibility is concerned.
there Is a lot of good material
and you may find some info that
leads to answers at:
http://www.w3.org/wai. (DAVID
POEHLMAN)
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