Newsletter Archives - January 2004
Note
This newsletter is maintained here for archival purposes. The content presented here may be outdated, may contain out-of-date links, and may not represent current best practices or represent the opinion and recommendations of WebAIM. For up-to-date information, please refer to the WebAIM web site.
Featured Article
University Web Accessibility Policies: A Bridge Not Quite Far Enough
by Paul Bohman (WebAIM)
Abstract: Most university Web accessibility policies fall short of achieving their purpose. The Web sites of these universities often fail to meet minimum Web accessibility standards. Part of the problem lies with the policies themselves. Many of them fail to delineate a specific technical standard, fail to indicate whether compliance with the policy is required, fail to indicate a timeline or deadline for compliance, fail to define a system for evaluating or monitoring compliance, and fail to enumerate any consequences for failure to comply.Full Article: University Web Accessibility Policies: A Bridge Not Quite Far Enough
On Target Tip
Are PDF documents really accessible to all?
The answer is an ambiguous perhaps. It is true that with the new Acrobat Reader 6.0 PDF documents are more accessible but it has not eliminated the need for authors to create accessible PDF files. Most people associate the inaccessibility of PDF files with blind users. However, there are other considerations to make regarding other major disability groups. Check out WebAIM's tutorial on Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Techniques to learn the details.
Other Resources
Adobe's booklet: " How to Create Accessible Adobe PDF Files "
A tutorial on creating accessible PDFs from Microsoft office programs using Adobe Acrobat 6.0. Written by the High Tech Center Training Unit of the California Community Colleges.
On Target Resource
This resource, by Peter Bosher, is a wonderful collection of the many possible ways to browse the Internet. Written and maintained on the W3C's site for the Web Accessibility Initiative's Education and Outreach Working Group, this resource is very helpful and informative of the different methods and software people are using to access the Web. In the introduction to the piece Bosher writes, ?The purpose of this collection is to reflect the whole range of approaches used for browsing. If you design Web pages, then this will allow you to try out a particular browsing method with specific sites as a way of checking how usable they are for a given browser, or combination of browser and screen-reader, voice-recognition, or other adaptive systems. If you are a user who may be interested in finding the most effective method for you, then you should also find useful information here.? Whether you are testing Websites and need a comprehensive list of browsers or are looking for the best browsing experience available on the Web we found this collection to be a great place to start.
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