The Librarian's Internet: Make Yourself Accessible
Tips for making your Web site truly user-friendly
By Gail Junion-Metz -- School Library Journal, 7/1/2003
www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windows2000/default.aspx
Here are 67 step-by-step tutorials that will help make your PCs user-friendly for staff and students with disabilities. This is a great opportunity to learn about the many ways you can modify or enhance Windows. Created by: Microsoft, Redmond, WA. Don't Miss: Accessibility Wizard, one of the program's coolest features:.
World Wide Access – Accessible Web Design
www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/PDF/universal.design.pdf
This attractive eight-page introduction provides a nontechnical overview of accessible Web design. Share it with your fellow site creators—teachers, district technology coordinators, and homeschooling parents. Created by: DO-IT Program, University of Washington, Seattle. Detour: For an HTML version, go to www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/Technology/universal.design.html.
Equal Access—Computer Labs
www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/PDF/comp.access.pdf
This useful four-page brochure will help ensure that the computers in your library (and school computer labs) truly meet the needs of all students. This information was a real eye-opener for me—don't miss it! Created by: DO-IT Program. Detour: For an HTML version, go to www.washington.edu/doit/Brochures/Technology/comp.access.html.
WebAIM How-To Tutorials
www.webaim.org/howto
These 23 tutorials demonstrate how to enhance accessibility through site design, Web creation programs, such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage, as well as common document formats (for example, Acrobat and PowerPoint). Created by: Web Accessibility in Mind, Utah State
University, Logan.
This nifty set of simulations will help you imagine how users with disabilities will navigate your site. The screen-reader simulation demonstrates what a blind user would hear when connecting to a Web site (www.webaim.org/simulations/screenreader). There are also simulations of impaired vision (www.webaim.org/simulations/lowvision) and cognitive disabilities (www.webaim.org/simulations/cognitive). Created by: Web Accessibility in Mind.
Accessibility CheckersThese free Web-based programs will check your site and help make it more accessible. Students can run their project and assignment sites through these programs—an insightful disability awareness tool. Bobby (bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp), created as a public service, is the best known of these tools, but it's now more commercial in nature than it used to be. WAVE (www.wave.webaim.org/index.jsp), from a nonprofit organization, is also good. Created by: The Watchfire Corporation, Lexington, MA, and Web Accessibility in Mind.
