Many in this so-called minority:In the United States one out of five people, 20%, experience some disability. That is a significant number, 54 million people. The United Nations points out that there are more than a half billion disabled people worldwide. We cannot let so many be marginalized. This society faces enormous challenges and problems. We need everyone to participate in today's thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. We cannot afford to pre-judge or exclude anyone's abilities. Remember that it was a paraplegic president who led the United States through the 1940s. Beethoven was deaf by 1818, yet continued after that to compose the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony and many other works. Albert Einstein is said to have had such difficulty as a young child that today he might have been diagnosed for "cognitive disabilities." Today, a number of architects of the web, such as Dr. T.V. Raman, are blind. One "selfish" reason to design universal access into the web is so that everyone can enrich our lives. |
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CNET article about legal issues of web access
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Disabilities and the LawThe Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Section 255b), and Section 508 of the 1998 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act--these add up to legal requirements for providing accessible web sites. The CNET article about legal issues and the web explains that public agencies and institutions do have a responsibility to provide web sites accessible to everyone. Lawsuits, such as the one brought by Randy Tamez of San Jose in 1998 against the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, will see that the laws are enforced. Hopefully, private sites, and not just those who must comply with the ADA, will learn the advantages of universal design. A recent article in A List Apart about accessibility summarizes the significance of the legal mandates for web designers. |
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Web Accessibility InitiativeThe W3C organized the effort called the Web Accessibility Initiative, which has now released guidelines to help web authors. The WAI has released:
Any web designer (no matter how experienced) can learn from the detailed techniques document. Every web designer should review his or her site against the checklist. Continue to Notes on "Alternatives">> Other comment notes for this unit: |
Copyright by dwang, 1999. All rights reserved.
