web accessibility

"Web accessibility" refers to the legal and ethical obligation to design sites that all people, regardless of their physical or developmental abilities or impairments, have access to Web-based information and services. Making Web pages accessible is accomplished by designing Web pages that allow the effective use of adaptive technologies to access their content.

The advantages to employing accessible Web design go beyond the need to make information available to people with disabilities. Accessible Web pages insure that information reaches the broadest audience, enabling the accommodation of not only physical limitations, but also language, age, technological and other factors that effect access to the Web. And employing techniques that make pages accessible also facilitates effective Web design by resulting in cleaner code and greater browser compatibility.

Having always practiced user-centered design the concept of web accessibility held a great affinity for me. Also, realizing that it would become a legal requirement for certain types of sites I established myself as a web accessibility expert before many even knew what it was. Today accessible design is simply part of my design process. In addition to user-centered design adhering to web standards also allows sites to more readily be Section 508 compliant, and in theory "accessible."

The Web Accessibility Learning Modules are the work product of a grant recipient team I was on. Aside from the grant award for the web accessibility modules I have been presenting on the topic since 2000 and was a forerunner and web accessibility evangilist for the CSU system for nearly seven years.