Q&A: Ask the Experts
Question: Do you have any suggestions for resources on making websites and online courses more accessible for those with disabilities?
Answer: Michigan State University is currently undergoing a process to make all of their websites and online courses more accessible. They have provided quite a bit of training for their employees to learn more about accessibility and provided us with a checklist of things that we should be considering when retrofitting our websites and online courses. A checklist that you may find helpful can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html.
Another resource that they have provided us in our training is the Web Accessibility Toolbar for Internet Explorer. You can add this toolbar to your Internet Explorer browser window by going to http://paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html and clicking on the download link at the bottom of the page.
Once this is installed on your Internet Explorer browser window you can use it to see if all of your images have alt tags, see what your website might look like for someone with color blindness, better understand the order that a screen reader will read your content, and many other accessibility items.
Firefox also has an accessibility extension that can be added to that browser. It can be found at http://firefox.cita.uiuc.edu/. Read the instructions for installing the toolbar into your browser.
If you would like to test out how your site sounds using a screen reader you can install a free copy of SATOGO (System Access to Go) by going to http://www.satogo.com. Once installed you can have the program read through the content in your website and make sure that it is being read appropriately.
Hopefully these tools will help get you started. I’m glad to hear you are interested in making your websites and online courses accessible for everyone.
Tags: accessibility, accessible websites