Hi Jeannie,

Check out http://www.cast.org/bobby/ where you can download "Bobby" to check
your website for Accessibility.  Bobby is a Web Site Validator for
disability access and browsers compatibility.  Just download and run Bobby
on your web site, It will give you a summery of what it thinks should be
changed and give you suggestions how to fix it.

Here is just a little part of the about file

"Bobby is a tool for Web page authors. It will help them identify changes to
their pages needed so users with disabilities can more easily use their Web
pages. For example, a blind user will be aided by adding a sound track to a
movie, and a hard-of-hearing user will be aided by a written transcript of a
sound file on a Web page. Bobby will recommend that these be added if they
do not already exist.

Many people with disabilities will use special Web browsers, such as one
which reads text out loud using a speech synthesizer for blind users. The
suggestions made by Bobby will help authors to add information to a Web page
which will help the special browsers work more effectively. To learn more
about accessibility issues, please start with our Resources page and follow
the links. For example, the "rationale" items on the IBM Web site give
explanations of how specific items can help."

Check it out

George

-----Original Message-----
From: Carpenter, Jeannie M. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 9:53 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: need help w/ reference for graphical navigation problem


I have been having some difficulty with a couple of our technical guys for
some time around the issue of accessibility on our web site.  I am hoping
some of you can help me with a problem that erupted in the last week related
to this.  I need to track down a reference or two to back up my stance on an
issue.

The top page of our web site does has a link to a "text only version" of
just our top level pages (that's the good news).  However, if someone choose
to visit our site via the main "regular" page, not via the text only
version, they are likely to encounter a problem, because the main body of
the top page is graphical, which means the main navigation links are
graphical.  I discovered last week while testing out the "wemedia" screen
reader, that if someone opted to "view" our main page rather than going to
the text only version, they would not even hear that those graphic-based
navigation links are even there, which means they wouldn't get to our second
level (main pages)!    I forward this observation to these guys, and one of
them has basically launched a frontal attack around it, even though I
offered a very simple solution - just add the text based navigation to the
top page that we have on all of our inner pages.

I know I have read in several places a description of the problem and
recommendations about what to do if someone uses graphic-based navigation on
web pages.  Do any of you know any references for that information?  Where
it can be found on-line, so that I can simply refer my colleagues to it?
That way they can't attack me.  If someone else says it and it's in writing,
it takes me out of the equation.  Any assistance you can provide would be so
very appreciated.  Tx.

Jeannie
[log in to unmask]
http://www.wcupa.edu