"Under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, agencies must provide employees and members of the public who have disabilities access to electronic and information technology that is comparable to the access available to employees and members of the public who are not individuals with disabilities. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology." -- preface, Section 508 Reference Manual
On June 25, 2001, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 became law. What this means is that any US government agency whose web site remains inaccessible to persons with disabilities is in violation of the law. Violators can be sued.
The situation in Canada is different, though the ultimate goal is the same. There are a set of "Common Look and Feel Guidelines" put together by the Treasury Board Secretariat which are meant to be consulted in the design of all government agency web sites, but there are currently no penalties for non-compliance.
According to Christian Duval, Chief Information Officer at the Treasury Board Secretariat, these guidelines are being used in the formulation of a document similar to Section 508 with a compliance deadline of December 31, 2002. The difference between the Canadian and American documents, Duval says, "will be the Government of Canada's adoption of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative as reference material to ensure the Government of Canada is in line with industry standards, new technologies and developments and accessible information." Clearly,then, web accessibility is an issue with some currency. And as the public sector comes into compliance, the private sector will fall into line soon after. So it's about time that web designers began to pay some attention to these issues.
Broadly defined, web accessibility means making it possible for users with disabilities to access your web site. In real terms, this means allowing visually impaired web surfers to access all the content your site contains. Other forms of disability, including mobility impairment and hearing impairment, are usually dealt with at the level of the computer's operating system. But since the web is primarily a visual medium, it becomes a challenge to present visual information in a way that blind users can understand. Most blind web surfers utilize access tools such as screen readers, software programs that read page text aloud. Common examples are Jaws and Window-Eyes, for Windows, and OutSpoken for the Macintosh operating system. The complicated layout of some web sites as well as HTML itself pose problems for screen readers. Although the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has established guidelines for making web pages accessible, browser makers have yet to produce a browser that completely supports the HTML standard.
There are other issues involved with web sites designed using Macromedia's Flash program. Screen readers can not currently access content embedded in Flash files, making that information unavailable to blind users. Macromedia is currently working to address issues of accessibility, but for the foreseeable future plain HTML will continue to be preferable when designing for universal access.
Joe Clark is a Toronto writer whose book Designing Accessible Websites will be released by New Riders in October. He believes that there is precious little in the way of resources for web designers to learn how to code sites for accessibility. He maintains a Web Accessibility weblog which discusses these issues and points to other resources, discussions, and news. Especially now that the law has taken effect, he feels that web designers need to make accessibility a natural part of the design process for new sites, not to mention all the sites that will need to be retrofitted to make them accessible. With the deadline in the US already past, and the Canadian one looming, it makes sense for web designers to familiarize themselves with issues of accessibility right away. Not only is it the right thing to do, soon it will be the law.
Further information:
Section 508 Reference Manual
Treasury Board Secretariat Common Look and Feel Guidelines
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
Joe Clark's Accessiblog