Eye On 508

• Maryland's Accessible IT in Education Trainings
• CATEA Receives Grant to Promote Distance Learning Access for Students
• World Wide Web Consortium Issues User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation
• Creating Accessible Websites

Maryland's Accessible IT in Education Trainings

The Maryland Technology Assistance Program is hosting a number of trainings and conferences in the first half of 2003. These trainings will focus on integrating the accessibility of information technology into Maryland education institutions.

For a complete listing and more information on these trainings and conferences, please visit the MD TAP Accessible IT web page at www.mdtap.org/dbtac or call 1-800-832-4827 (V/TTY).

CATEA Receives Grant to Promote Distance Learning Access for Students

News Release (November, 2002): An increasing number of institutions of higher education are turning to distance learning to serve their students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. However, most distance learning courses are limited in accessibility and pose problems for full participation of students and instructors with disabilities. This is soon going to change.

The Southeast Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC), a unit of the Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (CATEA) within the College of Architecture recently received a grant from the office of Post Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education for a demonstration project to enhance access for students with disabilities to distance learning courses.

"The exciting thing about this project is that we are not just going to 'make over' a few distance learning courses, our goal is to provide training and technical assistance that can improve distance education practices nationwide," says Robert Todd, Project Director for the grant.

Todd and his team will collaborate with two other centers at Georgia Tech: the Center for Distance Learning and the Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. Georgia Tech faculty will receive training on accessible course design, and these core faculty members will be funded to make existing and new distance education programs accessible to students with disabilities. Project staff will also work with the Georgia Tech Office for Students with Disabilities to raise awareness about the need for accessible distance education on the Georgia Tech campus for both faculty and students and to evaluate the accessibility of the courses identified.

"While Georgia Tech will be used as an example of successful practices in accessible education, this information will be disseminated to other educational entities nationwide, giving them the tools they need to create their own accessible distance education courses," says Todd.

The grant will also help fund a public-private partnership between CATEA and IDET Communications, Inc., a private company based in Atlanta, to develop a fully accessible ten-module online training course designed to increase awareness about disability and accessibility issues in distance learning.

Additionally, the project will work with the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) to develop voluntary standards and procedures for evaluating the accessibility of online courses and to include that information in the MERLOT database of online courses. MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students in higher education.

For more information on this project, contact Robert Todd at Robert.todd@arch.gatech.edu

World Wide Web Consortium Issues User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation

December 17, 2002

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (UAAG 1.0) as a W3C Recommendation, representing consensus among developers and the disability community on accessibility features needed in browsers and multimedia players used to access the Web. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption.

"Web browsers and media players serve people as the front door to the Web. But when those tools aren't usable by people with disabilities, it's akin to locking the door and leaving no key," noted Tim
Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "For the past five years, the technical and disability experts in the Web Accessibility Initiative have provided definitive guidelines for making accessible Web content and designing authoring software that does the same, automatically. Today, with the announcement of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines, developers have the specific guidance they need to make Web browsers and media players more useful to more people."

The Web is for Everyone -- Content, Authoring Tools, Browsers, and Multimedia Players Must Be Accessible

The Web has created unprecedented opportunities for people around the world to learn, work, shop, play, and communicate with others; and even more so for people with disabilities, who have frequently been excluded from many of these activities. Access to the Web for people with disabilities, however, presumes that Web developers choose accessible design over inaccessible design; these guidelines explain how to make accessible design choices when developing browsers and media players.

UAAG 1.0 is written for software developers, and addresses requirements such as accessibility of the user interface, rendering of accessibility information, and user choice in configuring browsers and media players. These guidelines also address interoperability of mainstream browsers and multimedia players with assistive technologies used by people with disabilities. UAAG 1.0 is third in a complementary set of Web accessibility guidelines which already include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) and the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (ATAG 1.0).

UAAG Leads to Improved Software for All Users

All three guidelines (UAAG, WCAG, ATAG) have been developed by W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Over the past five years WAI has become recognized as the leading international authority on Web accessibility, addressing accessibility issues for users with visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, and neurological disabilities through device-independent, multimodal design. Together these three WAI guidelines help Web developers deliver on the promise of a universal Web that is accessible to all.

UAAG 1.0 addresses a variety of user agent types including HTML and XHTML browsers, multimedia players, graphics viewers, and assistive technologies. Software that conforms to UAAG 1.0 is expected to be more flexible, manageable, extensible, and beneficial to all users.

Browsers and Media Players Already Implementing Many UAAG Features

"For the past five years, browser and media player manufacturers, assistive technology developers, and disability experts have contributed their expertise to UAAG 1.0," explained Jon Gunderson, Chair of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAWG). "In addition to the
UAAG 1.0 Recommendation, the UAWG has produced Techniques for UAAG 1.0 (detailed information on implementation in different markup languages and user agent types), a Test Suite for UAAG 1.0, and interactive forms for UAAG 1.0 evaluations. These tools will enable developers, users, and purchasing agents to assess the extent of accessibility improvements in Web software."

The implementation of UAAG 1.0 in software is already underway. The Working Group used an extended Candidate Recommendation period for intensive discussions with developers and documentation of UAAG 1.0 implementations in a variety of software. This documentation demonstrated the feasibility and industry acceptance of UAAG 1.0, which carries endorsements and commitments from developers of browsers, media players, assistive technologies, and from government and disability organizations.

About the Web Accessibility Initiative [WAI]

W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), in partnership with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through five activities:

1. ensuring that core technologies of the Web support accessibility;
   
2. developing guidelines for Web content, user agents, and authoring tools;
   
3. facilitate development of evaluation and repair tools for accessibility;
   
4. conducting education and outreach;
   
5. coordinating with research and development that can affect future accessibility of the Web.

Creating Accessible Websites

The Wesley Center for New Media announces its new Certificate Program in Creating Accessible Websites. This 3-day program provides the fundamentals you need to create effective, accessible Web sites with a special emphasis on Section 508 compliance.

Each day covers a new topic- Web Accessibility: Policy and Practice; Web Accessibility: Basic Techniques; and Web Accessibility: Advanced Techniques.

The trainings will be offered on March 14-16 and June 6-8, 2003.

For more information, visit the Wesley Center Website at www.newmedia.gatech.edu/