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Comment on “Accessibility, It’s a Right!” http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php I liked this website very much and I liked the way they deal with the issue of accessibility. It uses very simple and very understandable language. They start with defining accessibility, which they mention means that people with different disabilities can understand, navigate, and interact with the web. This is so important, because the web touches many aspects of our lives such as education, health, employment and more. They also elaborate about how we can make the web accessible by using different types of software for different types of disabilities such vision, hearing and mobility. As a teacher or a designer, I always take into consideration students or learners with different types of disabilities and try to do my best to solve their problems, or at least not to let the disability hinder their learning. I think that it is something any teacher or designer should think about. In other words, teachers and designers should make it part of their planning and change their way of teaching to meet the needs of all the students. In my view this website is a must see for those involved in the fields of teaching and designing, because it is full of very useful information about how and why accessibility is important to designers.

This web provides simple and clear definition of accessibility, the reason why web accessibility is important, how to make the web accessible and introduces software. It helps developers and educators design websites that can be more accessible to those with impairments.

I was very impressed by the index page among other educational tools, which accurately started with the meaning of accessibility and its implications. That caught my attention right away, and essentially that’s what browsing is all about… the act of capturing the attention of the visitor. In the online community, it has been well known that if you can't satisfy the curiosity of the visitor in the first 30 seconds you might lose your hit. The article discusses in detail all accessibility issues, including disability, illiteracy, technology barriers, equal access/opportunity and interaction. In my opinion, this website represented all seven principles of Universal Instructional Design and effectively addressed their implication with supporting policies and resources. The article is an exceptional learning and teaching resource about accessibility, disabilities and digital divide. I will be visiting this website frequently to use the contained practical knowledge and implement it in my prototype. Excellent job Lu, tnx.

Technical Remarks:

You posted an excellent website dealing with accessibility . Here is what I explored more about the website. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) was founded by Sir. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web. This consortium ensures compatibility and agreement among industries in the adoption of new standards. The Web is having great impact on the way we work, learn, live and communicate with one another. It is essential that this new medium be accessible to everyone including people with disabilities. Consortium helps to make the Web more accessible for people with disabilities. Consortium addresses accessibility on many levels. People with disabilities use a wide range of alternative approaches, different from traditional mouse-and-screen-based browsers. W3C provides the information on Screen-readers, Browsers with adaptive technology, Voice browsers and other access methods. (http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/Browsing) It is essential that educational institutions to think in advance, and develop best practice policies that will ensure the organization’s resources are always accessible to everyone; equal access for all students. W3C.org is one reliable resource to do this. The Consortium is engaged in a project to help people to understand accessibility of web pages and to set up some standards on how to judge if pages are accessible and how to make sure the pages that are written are accessible. These guidelines and other information can be found at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/. Also the tutorials published on W3C, by the actual developers of the technologies, is very useful.