Introduction

The National Center on Low-Incidence Disabilities (NCLID) is pleased to offer this tutorial on creating accessible web sites. NCLID has taken the lead in developing academic courses in the area of blindness and visual impairment, deafness, and severe disabilities that can be delivered online. In so doing, we have discovered ways to make a web site accessible without making an alternative text-only site and without making the site unattractive. This tutorial is a compilation of the techniques we have learned and used to ensure effective, efficient, appealing and accessible web pages.

Why You Should Care: Section 508

In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual's ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ‘ 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others. For more information about Section 508, go to http://www.section508.gov/.

Onsite Classes

The National Center for Low-Incidence Disabilities staff can also deliver this course onsite for your staff. For more information regarding costs and scheduling an onsite class, please contact Nathan Lowell at nathan.lowell@unco.edu or 1-800-353-2693.

Prerequisites

This tutorial is designed for a variety of professionals (i.e. web developers, instructional designers, faculty, professional support staff, etc.) interested in designing and developing accessible web pages. Prior to taking this course, learners should be comfortable reading and writing simple HTML code. Learners should have experience building web pages in a web editing program like Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Pagemill, etc. Learners should also be familiar with the following web features:

• hyperlinks
• tables
• inserting images
• image maps with hotspots
• alt tags
• tiled and solid backgrounds
• frames
• rollovers
• scrolling boxes

Let's get started!

The best way to do this is to learn how to 'hear' your web page design as well as 'see' it.