Middle Level Education Aims for Equity and Inclusion, but Do Our School Websites Meet ADA Compliance?

An often-overlooked component of a middle school website is the necessity for that website to be accessible to those with disabilities, while following the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act. In support of the belief that support the belief that inclusive education and respect for diversity should be integrated throughout the school, this study investigated the accessibility of middle school websites in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio by selecting a random sample of 150 schools and analyzing their homepages using WAVE (Web Accessibility Versatile Evaluator), which reports accessibility violations by annotating a copy of the page that was evaluated and presenting embedded icons and indicators to disclose breaches with ADA. Out of 150 districts, 54% had errors that need immediate attention and all 150 schools had alerts of likely violations that ranged from alt-text omissions and empty or confusing links to issues with color contrast and keyboard-only navigation. The article proceeds to give practical suggestions for eliminating many of the errors, even for those shareholders with less than sophisticated technological expertise

Accessible Website Content Guidelines for Users with Intellectual Disabilities

Background: The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative has issued guidelines for making websites better and easier to access for people with various disabilities (W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines 1999). - \ud Method: The usability of two versions of a website (a non-adapted site and a site that was adapted on the basis of easy-to-read guidelines) was tested with two groups of 20 participants. One group had intellectual disabilities but could read, the other group had no identified intellectual disabilities. In a 2 × 2 experimental design, it was investigated whether the easy-to-read website was indeed better accessible and usable for the participants with intellectual disabilities. - \ud Results: The adaptation of the website worked well for participants with intellectual disabilities. Users without identified intellectual disabilities were as effective with the adapted site as they were with the non-adapted site. - \ud Conclusion: The results form an empirical basis for recommendations about applying guidelines for easy-to-read text on websites for people with intellectual disabilities

Evaluating global e-government sites: A view using web diagnostics tools

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 The AuthorsSeveral governments across the world have embraced the digital revolution and continue to take advantage of the information and communication facilities offered by the Internet to offer public services. Conversely, citizens’ awareness and expectations of Internet based online-public-services have also increased in recent times. Although the numbers of the different national e-Government web portals have rapidly increased in the last three years, the success of these portals will largely depend on their accessibility, quality and privacy. This paper reports the results of an evaluative study of a cross-section of e-Government portals from these three perspectives, using a common set of performance metrics and Web diagnostic engines. Results show that not only are there wide variations in the spectrum of information and services provided by these portals, but that significant work still needs to be undertaken in order to make the portals examples of ‘best practice’ e-Government services