WEB ACCESSIBILITY:
BUSINESS CASE AND DEMONSTRATION RESOURCES FOR PROMOTION ADVOCACY
Presenter #1
Judy Brewer
MIT/CSAIL Building 32-G530
While
a growing number of individuals are aware of the need for Web accessibility,
many organizations have yet to make their Web sites accessible to people with
disabilities and the elderly. Individual advocates for Web accessibility can
play a vital role in educating and encouraging organizations to ensure that
their Web-based resources are accessible to people with disabilities.
Over
the past year the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative
(WAI) has redesigned its Web site to make both educational and technical
resources easier to locate. W3C/WAI has also greatly expanded its introductory
materials on the site in order to better explain the more technical resources. In
addition, WSC/WAI has added resources which can help explain the need for and
the benefits of an organizational commitment to Web accessibility, and has
added resources which demonstrate differences between “bad” (inaccessible) and
“good” (accessible) Web sites.
This
presentation will focus on several recently published W3C/WAI resource arid how these resources can help in promoting Web
accessibility, either within one’s own organization, or in advocacy efforts
towards other organizations. We will introduce brief case studies of
organizations that have used the document, “Developing a Web Accessibility
Business Case for Your Organization. Participants will be invited to share their
perspectives on successes and problems with this approach, and to discuss goals
and strategies for using these and/or other resources to promote increased
implementation of Web accessibility guidelines.
In addition, we will demonstrate use of the “Before/After Web Site,” which
shows an inaccessible Web site being transformed into an equally attractive yet
accessible.
Web site, as part of a presentation or training session to
promote awareness of the need for and the feasibility of implementing the
W3C/WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The presentation will also cover
other recently updated and/or recently released W3C/WAI resources for
promoting, implementing, and evaluating Web accessibility; and how to use new features
of the WAI Web site to stay abreast of the latest educational and technical
resources available from the Web Accessibility Initiative. Go to previous article
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