Brought to you by the UCSB Web Standards Group (WSG)
Who am I?

Mark Grosch – Disabled Students Program
 Adaptive Technology Specialist
 Campus Web Accessibility contact person
 Email: Mark.Grosch@sa.ucsb.edu
 Phone: 805-893-3590
General Overview:

The Law: Sections 504, 508, the ADA
and Unruh.

Some Good and Bad Examples

Multimedia and the Remote Classroom
Section 504
 States
that "no qualified individual
with a disability in the United States
shall be excluded from, denied the
benefits of, or be subjected to
discrimination under" any program or
activity that either receives Federal
financial assistance aka “equal
access to education”
Section 508
In 1998, Congress amended the
Rehabilitation Act to require Federal
agencies to make their electronic and
information technology accessible to
people with disabilities.
 Section 508 was enacted to eliminate
barriers in information technology

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

The Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA) requires covered entities to
furnish appropriate auxiliary aids and
services where necessary to ensure
effective communication with individuals
with disabilities.
California Unruh Civil Rights Act

All persons within the jurisdiction of this
state are free and equal, and no matter
what their … disability, or medical
condition are entitled to the full and
equal accommodations, advantages,
facilities, privileges, or services in all
business establishments of every kind
whatsoever.
- Civil Code section 51(b)
Reasons for Accessibility
It’s the law.
 It makes your site easier for search
engines to index (Universal Design).
 It’s the right thing to do for our students,
fellow staff members and the public who
wish to obtain information about UCSB.

“Accessible” doesn’t have to
mean “Plain”
Disney Store UK with Images On
Disney Store UK with Images Off
How do the blind “see” websites?
A screen reader is a software application
that attempts to identify and interpret
what is being displayed on the screen.
This interpretation is then represented to
the user with text-to-speech, sound
icons, or a Braille output. Screen
readers are a form of assistive
technology (AT) potentially useful to
people who are blind, visually impaired,
or learning disabled, often in
combination with other AT such as
screen magnifiers.
Policies for the future:

UC Office of the President is working on a
set of mandatory guidelines that will
require all Web sites in the University of
California be compliant, prioritized by the
importance of access.

If you would like to have a say in this,
please visit their Web site to examine the
draft guidelines:

http://tinyurl.com/3yd6vbs
Resources:
The UCSB Web Standards Group has put
together a very comprehensive set of
documents for helping you achieve your
accessibility goals:
http://www.ucsb.edu/webguide/accessibility.shtml
The Key to Evaluation –
Human Interaction Testing
Web accessibility requires more than just
validation and accessibility tools; it requires
human judgment!
It is important to remember that accessibility
tools can only partially check accessibility
through automation. The real key is to learn
and understand the Web accessibility
standards rather than relying on a tool to
determine if a page is accessible or not. Also
tools change over time!
Quick and Easy Tests:

Turn off Images (Firefox allows you to
do this very easily)

Use only the keyboard for navigating
your site – see if you can access all your
content using tab, shift-tab, spacebar
and enter keys

Check all multimedia for captioning
A Note on CAPTCHAs?



Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell
Computers and Humans Apart.“
A ‘CAPTCHA’ is a way to make sure it’s a real person
filling out a form, not some “bot” trying to spam your
blog or sign up for free email accounts, e.g.
See http://recaptcha.net for audio alternative
CAPTCHAs if you really need to use them
Marketing Web Accessibility
to Your Department

Getting from No or I Don't Know to Yes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Identify key players.
Evaluate Web site(s) for accessibility.
Make a list of things to do.
Work with key players to develop a
policy/commitment.
Map out an implementation plan.
Update your web site.
Publicize your success.
Continue to monitor, educate, and update.
What’s New?

California Assembly Bill 386
 Requires publishers of electronic
instructional materials for use in
postsecondary education to make them
compatible with audiovisual captioning
software.
Revisions to the ADA
 AFB files suit against Penn State

 http://tinyurl.com/2wljdyl
Questions and Answers