Web Pages for the Disabled
PC World,
by Judy Heim
January, 1997
Internet Tips for More Accessible Web Pages
For the sight impaired, surfing the World Wide Web can be like stumbling through a dark art gallery: You can't distinguish the picture from the doors. Your screen reader can't tell you what's in a picture. Image maps hold no information for you. You can't correctly "hear" what's in a table, because your screen reader jumbles its content into one long sentence.
Numerous efforts are under way to make the Web more accessible to visually impaired users They range from defining HTML standards for tagging graphics with a good spoken description, to encouraging Web page owners to offer text-only versions of their pages.
The Web site of WGBH, a public television station serving the Boston area, offers a continuing experiment in accessibility solutions for both blind and hearing impaired users. For those with limited vision, for example, a giant letter D precedes images on the WGBH site. Clicking on the D displays a two-to three-sentence description that can be heard through a screen reader.
Making your own Web site (business or personal) accessible to users with disabilities doesn't require a lost of work.
Offering a text-only version of your page is a good start. You'll find a complete guide on how to make a Web site more easily accessible at the Web site of the Trace R&D Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/web/index.html).
You might also check out the page for the National Center for Accessible Media and the page for the Center of Information Technology Accommodation, http://www.gsa.gov:80/coca/.
As one blind Web surfer notes, "The number of solutions is proliferating. The great thing about the Web is that it offers something for everyone."
Make your Web Page Friendlier for Sight Impaired Readers
Here are tips to make sites accessible to sight impaired viewers:
- Offer text-only versions of your pages. Place the hot link to the text version at the very top of the page so surfers with screen readers don't have to listen to the entire page in order to find it.
- Skip the magenta fish-scale background with white letters. Aim for high contract between the text and background. White lettering on black is best for low vision computer users. Use big, bold letters.
- Avoid tables if you can. If you can't, provide a link to a text version of the table.
- Include a description of each picture, or a link to a page describing the picture.
- If you use an image map, provide a link to a page offering the map's links in text form.
- Download NCAM's Web access symbol, shown here from the NCAM site (http://www.boston.com/wgbh/pages/ncam/symbolwinner.html) and add it to your page.
[An image and description of the Web access symbol accompanied this article.]
