Premium Essay

Web Accessibility Standards

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By tmissey
Words 737
Pages 3
Web Accessibility Standards

University of Phoenix
WEB434
November 11, 2011

Accessibility Standards have a Purpose
The typical user of websites can see, hear, and type while navigating the site. Accessibility standards are aimed at bringing the experience of a website that may not have the same abilities in viewing, typing, and navigating a site. The Internet, information, and services should be available to everyone regardless of how an individual accesses web content. “The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability” (Accessibility - W3C). When design to a website achieves all that the web can offer to those with disabilities then accessibility standards goals have been met.
Why we have Standards
The Internet should be accessible to everyone and website development must consider the different kinds of access needed. The W3C “Introduction to Web Accessibility” describes accessibility scope as: “Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities” (Introduction to Web Accessibility). Even those that aren’t classified as individuals with disabilities can benefit by these standards. The functionality of a site designed to accommodate the disabled can also help those who have a temporary injury or even those who are aging and losing sight, hearing, and mobility.
For government websites the importance is a large focus to serve individuals with disabilities more effectively. Based on the U.S. Department of Justice Disability Rights Section: “The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and, if the government entities receive Federal funding, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, generally require that state and local governments provide qualified

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Web/434 Week 2 - Web Accessibility Standards Paper

...Running Head: WEB ACCESSIBILITY Web Accessibility Week Two Individual [Place Name Here] University of Phoenix March 21, 2011 Web accessibility is for individuals with disabilities. This allows these individuals to use the web. Web accessibility helps people with disabilities to perceive, understand navigate and interact with the web. This also allows these people to contribute to the web. Web accessibility can benefit many individuals but benefits the elderly more due to the changing abilities due to their aging (W3C 2011). Web accessibility helps individuals with all different disabilities that have trouble accessing the web. This can include individuals with visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. There are millions of people with disabilities and these disabilities can really affect the way that they use the web. These days there are so many web sites and different web software that have accessibility barriers that can really make it challenging for individuals with disabilities to use the web. There are more web sites and web software that becomes available and as they do individuals with disabilities are able to use and contribute to the web better (W3C 2011). As mentioned before web accessibility can benefit other individuals without disabilities. Web accessibility is designed to meet the needs of many different users and their situations. This flexibility can benefit individuals without...

Words: 668 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Cmgt 445 Team B Week 4

...a document showing the hardware and software needed for an IS. The key project manager and key stakeholders are responsible for creating a good business case for investment. They should also include testing protocols and standards to keep the project focused and with a specified budget. Security to all enterprise systems such as databases, servers, and the organizations ERP requires attention in a business case as well. The document writers must also show the ROI and how the new technology will integrate into the organization's legacy systems. This is a daunting task for a team to take on and extremely time consuming. With these steps and plans, we will outline the prototyping environments and processes, testing design to include procedures and standards, source of accessibility, and integration. Prototyping environments and processes Choosing the correct prototyping methods requires careful planning and analysis for the type of business that an IS is being implemented. When planning, stakeholders need to determine where a high-functioning prototype will receive funding, or if a lower quality parts estimate will be adequate. The decision will come down to the cost versus the potential benefit, and there is no standard measure for this first level prototyping decision (Lokesh & Jain, 2010). The prototyping process uses a trial and error approach to discovering how a system should operate. The flow of the prototyping...

Words: 2821 - Pages: 12

Free Essay

Android

...Android SDK. To assist you with managing date formatting across locales, Android 4.3 includes a new getBestDateTimePattern() method that automatically generates the best possible localized form of a Unicode UTS date for a locale that you specify. It’s a convenient way to provide a more localized experience for your users. To help you test your app more easily in other locales, Android 4.3 introduces pseudo-locales as a new developer option. Pseudo-locales simulate the language, script, and display characteristics associated with a locale or language group. Currently, you can test with a pseudo-locale for Accented English, which lets you see how your UI works with script accents and characters used in a variety of European languages. Accessibility and UI Automation Starting in Android 4.3,...

Words: 494 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Finance

...Guidelines for Designing and Developing Accessible Web Sites by Using Microsoft Solutions Version 2.0 Published: January 2007 Copyright © 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Summary This white paper is intended to help readers better understand the issues involved in making Web sites accessible to people with disabilities, a legal obligation that also benefits all users of the Web. We will deal with the current issues in accessibility, as well as the various initiatives, norms, and standards implemented with respect to Web-enabled applications. In this regard, we will examine using Microsoft products and technologies to design and develop Web sites that comply with accessibility guidelines. More specifically, this document describes a set of guidelines that enable you to produce accessible Web sites by using the new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 technologies as part of Microsoft Office system 2007 or previous solutions such as Content Management Server 2002 and SharePoint 2003 technologies. It defines the extent to which these technologies offer the best possible compliance with, as a minimum, the priority 1 checkpoints of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0. Status This document is the second release of the technical white paper on the accessibility of Web sites that are based on Microsoft solutions; it references the standards that were available at the date of publication and the features available in current versions...

Words: 46400 - Pages: 186

Premium Essay

Nt1330 Unit 3 Assignment

...1. Describe how browsers use plug-ins. See page 295. (1 point) Use browsers to find the correct version plug-ins. When installing a plug-in, the browser and a file format, such as PDF,SWF or MOV, are cognated. Then the browser can run the related plug-ins automatically. 2. Explain why cookies are useful in an environment that is based on a stateless protocol, and provide some concrete examples of their use. See page 296 (2 points) Stateless protocol is a situation that you would not leave browsing traces when you look through a web site. Coolie is like an information recorder. It would keep some sources, such as words, choices and signs, in order to make your latter visit more convenient. Cookies are useful because it could solve the stateless...

Words: 1855 - Pages: 8

Free Essay

Journal 1

...Urbana-Champaign. From 2000 to 2002, she worked at the National Center for Super Computing Applications Education Outreach and Technology group and focused on educational tools for K-12 math and science using Linux-based clustering technology. As an intern for the US Department of Education, she evaluated software for Section 508 compliance. From 2004 to 2005 Ameenah worked in the International Braille and Technology Center at the National Center for the Blind. In November 2005, she wrote an Article "You Want Me to learn what?" that was published in the October issue of the Braille Monitor, a publication of the National Federation of the Blind, also she organized the Goals for Achieving Math Accessibility (GAMA) Summit, a conference that focused on the current and future state of math accessibility for blind and visually impaired students. She organized and developed curriculums for the Technology Outreach Seminars that brought nonvisual access technology training seminars to conventions of NFB affiliates. Ameenah currently...

Words: 347 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Usability Assignment on Web Accessibility

...Usability Assignment on Web Accessibility Wendell Robinson Capella University Web Accessibility Initiative's Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) need to be the concern of all web developer. Many people like myself can’t imagine their life without the internet it is where we get our world and local news, email, entertainment, etc. If a developer makes his website to be more accessible he ensure that people with disabilities can access his website just everyone else. The people who are visually impaired could access their content with the help of a “screen reader”. Screen reader applications read the printed text out loud, which helps blind people use computers and receive access to a text content of any kind. The blind can just open up a browser and listen to a screen-reader The physically impaired people can get the access to online content with the help of their computer using technologies that were designed to adapt the computer interface to their disabilities. People who are hard of hearing have always had the opportunity to read online content, however when it comes to video materials, they can read typed versions of important speeches or watch multimedia content with subtitles. One reason accessibility is important is that it can increase your audience. Without accessibility there is bound to be people in your audience who are not able to see, hear or simply pick up the mouse to navigate your website. This could mean loss of profit for...

Words: 324 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Censorship

...'Encore' to monitor Web access Date: July 2, 2014 Source: Georgia Institute of Technology Summary: Researchers have created a tool to monitor the accessibility of Web pages around the world that can be installed by adding a single line of code to a web page. The tool, Encore, runs when a user visits a website where the code is installed and then discreetly collects data from potentially censored sites. The researchers hope the data they collect will allow them to determine the where’s, when’s and how’s of what's blocked, as well as identify ways to get around restricted access. Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool to monitor the accessibility of Web pages around the world that can be installed by adding a single line of code to a web page. The tool, Encore, runs when a user visits a website where the code is installed and then discreetly collects data from potentially censored sites. Credit: Image courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool to monitor the accessibility of Web pages around the world that can be installed by adding a single line of code to a web page. The tool, Encore, runs when a user visits a website where the code is installed and then discreetly collects data from potentially censored sites. The researchers hope the data they collect will allow them to determine the where’s, when’s and how’s of what's blocked, as well as identify ways to get around restricted access. "Web censorship is a...

Words: 555 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Web Systems and Technologies

...Web Accessibility Initiative's Accessible Rich Internet Applications: Bridging Technology Shelia S Bradley IT3210 Web Systems and Technologies Dr. Azad Ali 26 January 2014 Web Accessibility Initiative’s Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) is a technical guide published by the World Wide Web that is typically supposed to make web content and web applications more accessible by people with disabilities. It acts as a bridge between the web content and applications and technology giving the two the availability to exchange messages easily. The purpose that ARIA was created was so that developers can use the latest web technologies to make sure that people with disabilities are able to use the assistive technology products to access the content on their web pages. New technology allows the use of dynamic content that allows web pages to constantly update and refresh, such as weather updates for the local news websites, bank account balances for online banking, stock market data, and sports scores for sports sites like ESPN. There are many features of WAI-ARIA that gives more control to the web page developers by allowing them to specify different features on the document such as ‘banner’, ‘menu’, ‘navigation’, and ‘search’. These tags give the user the ability to determine what information the tags may provide without having to guess and eliminating the need to have to search the entire page until they find the information needed. According to Henry (2013)...

Words: 380 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Phd Research Proposal

...Research (Working) Title An analysis of accessibility support demands in electronic learning systems in the context of Higher Education Information Services. Your reasons and purposes for undertaking this project This programme of study continues personal research and professional practice in the field of Information Science, particularly within the area of end-user systems accessibility. Within Higher Education, there is evidence of constant innovation and changing approaches to provision of online services; however, the wide ranging and long term issue of user accessibility has clearly become a secondary consideration. My PhD research should underpin improved provision of accessible systems for adult learners who are disabled (as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act and amendments). Your research project Most recently, the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) has become an important feature of electronic service delivery within the HE Information Services sector, demanding close attention to issues of functionality, sustainability and usability. Whilst some research has begun to examine the functionality of e-learning systems, little attention has been paid to usability issues, in particular to the accessibility of complex Web based interfaces for disabled users. Standards for achieving accessibility via technical specifications and interface design have been established for the conventional Web, however, it remains to be seen how far e-learning...

Words: 1245 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Professional Standards

...Professional Standards IT/237 May 23, 2014 Professional Standards How Tags are Used to Promote Accessibility and SEO The tags that are used to promote accessibility and search engine optimization are called tags. These tags are not displayed on what the browser renders for the web page, however, they do provide valuable information for the browser and search engines. Over time search engine optimization, or SEO, techniques have changed. In the early days of the Internet keyword meta tags were extremely important for search engines to find a site of a specific topic for the end user. However the keyword meta tags were soon exploited by developers and designers by doing something called “keyword stuffing.” Keyword stuffing is when keywords are inserted to the meta tag that are not relevant to the site. For example a search conducted for the keyword ‘bakery’ may turn up results for bakeries, butchers, and other sites that are not related to bakeries. Another form of keyword stuffing is repeating keywords to artificially inflate the page ranking. As search engines have developed the keyword tag is less critical for producing high search result rankings; in fact Google completely disregards the contents of the keyword tag when performing its indexing. The title and description tags also play a role in SEO however not all search engines support the description tag. Robot meta tags tell search engines while crawling and indexing. The default...

Words: 448 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Ibm Staff Management

...The company employs over 399,400 employees worldwide and serves clients in 170 countries. In 2009, IBM had annual revenues of USD 95.8 billion.   Hiring and retention   IBM includes a non‐discrimination statement that references disability in a number of its company policies, such as its Workforce Diversity Policy, Global Employment Standards Policy, Diverse Business Relationships Policy, and Supplier Conduct Principles. For example, IBM's Global Employment Standards states that “IBM will not discriminate in hiring, promotion, compensation of employees and employment practices on grounds of race, color, religion, age, nationality, social or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, marital status, pregnancy, political affiliation, disability or veteran status”. Furthermore, in its workforce diversity policy, IBM emphasizes that the company will make workplace accommodations in order to ensure effective job performance by qualified people with disabilities.   To implement the policy, IBM established a central reasonable accommodation fund to cover costs of adaptive equipment that are not part of the standard workstation or to provide for other accommodations such as transportation and interpreting services. By doing so, IBM managers are able to hire employees based on merit and skill...

Words: 1578 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

It/237 Professional Standards

...Professional Standards Avery Magee IT/237 09/16/2011 Vickie Bailey tags tags, are the information inserted into the “head” part of the web page right after the “title” tag is inserted giving the page a title. The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag. In the beginning I was under the impression that when I typed in a description for the meta tag that was what would be displayed on a search engine to summarize my site. After a little research it turns out that searches like Google will actually ignore the tag altogether (in some cases) and generate their own description for the site. Other search engines that are configured to use meta tags will pull the full or part description from the tag to display for users. Searchenginewatch.com said,” In review, it is worthwhile to use the meta description tag for your pages, because it gives you some degree of control with various crawlers. An easy way to do this often is to take the first sentence or two of body copy from your web page and use that for the meta description content.” The meta keywords tag is also addressed in the information I found as a rarely used thing of the past. The article on meta tags at Http://searchenginewatch.com considers these tags useful for the few crawlers out there that may actually still use the meta tag but very few do anymore. This particular tag is good for adding keywords to a search or generating...

Words: 541 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Web Usability Analysis Project

...Web Usability Analysis Project Philip Mambo Capella University Introduction Usability is how easy an object is to use. The object can be almost anything, including a machine, tool, process, book, software application or website. Anything that a person can interact with should be usable. In the case of websites and software applications, usability has been defined as the ease at which an average person can use the software or website to achieve specific goals. Usability is comprised of learnability, memorability, efficiency, satisfaction and errors. Learnability is how easy it is for a new user to accomplish tasks the first time they visit your website. Memorability is how easy it is for someone to come back to using your website after they haven’t used it for a period of time. Efficiency is how quickly users can complete tasks on your site after they are familiar with its use. Satisfaction is whether users enjoy the design of your site and errors refers to the number of errors users make when they use your site, the severity of the errors and how easy they are to recover from. CBRE, Inc http://www.cbre.com CBRE operates as a commercial real estate services and investment company website. The website is an informational and ecommerce website for visitors where they can find links to properties and can accessed the best deals. The main links are About Us, Services; Find a Property, Global...

Words: 3097 - Pages: 13

Free Essay

Usability Report

...guidelines. The data was collected from the website using an evaluation instrument that was developed (see document 1). HHS guidelines and WCAG 2.0 guidelines were used to create a set of criteria for the evaluation instrument (see document 1). The instrument was used to determine and describe data about: * The users of the website * Who are they? * What tasks they need to do? * The Positive and Negative of the website * What can be improved? * What can be maintained? * Is the website trustworthy and safe? * Is the website easy to navigate? * The user experience The quality of the website can be determined after assessing all the data to the criteria drawn from HCI standards and conventions. Some suggestions for improvements are also developed in this report that was based on the instrument data. Evaluation Evaluation of The Website Background Gumtree is...

Words: 2587 - Pages: 11