The Alliance
for Technology Access (ATA), World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C), National
Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), and other organizations
offer guidelines for creating web sites that are more globally
accessible. The guidelines are intended to help web authors design
pages that "transform gracefully" from one browser to another,
and remain universally accessible to more groups and individuals
regardless of physical, economical, and technical difficulties.
ADA stands for Americans with Disabilities Act, and the U.S. Department
of Justice site for ADA Act information is http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm.
These suggested guidelines, the purpose and proposed audience
of the site, the designer's expertise and maintenance issues,
and the current legal and technological changes need to be considered
in the overall designing of a site. The following listing is not
conclusive listing, but will be modified as trends and technology
changes. If you have comments, questions, and/or suggestions,
please contact me by e-mail at Sharon_P_Johnson@baylor.edu.
- Determine the web site's audience and their needs, its purpose,
its organization, content, and structure, and your time and
resources.
- Separate content (what is said) from structure (how it is
organized) from presentation (how it appears on the screen,
when spoken, when rendered by a Braille device, etc.).
- Contents--Ordered and structured, classified as Priority.
- Navigation elements and Site Maps. o Available Time and Resources--Use
them wisely.
- Keep the screen uncluttered. Leave considerable space around
all items. Avoid placing more than one hyperlink on any one
line.
- Background and text. Avoid tiled backgrounds; text can become
obscured. Avoid dark or bright colored backgrounds; high contrast
between text and background is desirable.
- Flickers--Avoid blinking or updating of the screen that causes
flicker. Some special effects can look great, but cause this
and should not be used.
- For each page which contains images, the designer can provide
a text-only alternative page (which can then be "spoken" with
screen reading software) or simply provide alternative links
with text descriptions.
- Include text descriptions for images (which can be "spoken"
by those using screen reading software). With images, utilize
the ALT attribute with IMG tags, in order to provide a descriptive
phrase which will appear as alternatives to images in text-only
browsers (i.e. Lynx).
- Image maps--Provide a text equivalent for each active region
and try to make them readable in Netscape and Microsoft Internet
Explorer.
- Graphics--Provide a long description of each graphic, script,
or applet that conveys significant information.
- Animated gifs--provide a text equivalent and possibly a long
description.
- ASCII--Replace ASCII art with an image or describe the ASCII
art and offer a means (e.g., a link) to skip over it.
- Frames--Ensure that descriptions of dynamic content are updated
when the dynamic content changes, and title each frame so that
users can keep track of frames by title.
- Multimedia-Provide a text transcript of all words (spoken
or sung) and all significant sounds for stand alone audio files,
synchronize text transcript with video, and provide visual notification
and transcripts where sounds are played automatically.
- Movies--Provide auditory descriptions that are synchronized
with the original audio.
- Sound--Create documents that work if the user can see and/or
hear. Provide "speech" using Talker
(http://www.mvpsolutions.com/PlugInSite/TalkerTutor.html),
or using Real Audio (http://www.realaudio.com/).
- Use the ADA compatible symbol.
- If all of these suggestions fail, provide an alternative
page that uses accessible technology with equivalent information,
such as an all text version without graphics.
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© Sharon Peregrine Johnson, All rights reserved,
2002. (All contents and computer graphics).
Updated March 8, 2002. Comments: Sharon_P_Johnson@baylor.edu
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