Accessibility: As part of your course requirements this semester, you will expected to use good web authoring technique to design, develop, and publish the start of an e-Portfolio. Read carefully and follow these Accessibility standard guidelines to ensure that all members of your viewing audience will have equal access to the information delivered in your e-Portfolio web pages.

Why is accessibility important to online course material that I author?

When you author online material, some of your potential viewers may have a disability, disorder, or disadvantage that could affect the way they use a computer. There are techniques you can utilize that will not only make your online authored material accessible to those viewers but will also provide a more user-friendly environment for all of your viewing audience.

Is it a law or "requirement" that my online material be accessible?

Currently, only government online material is mandated to be accessible. However, in time we should expect and begin to prepare ourselves for that mandate to apply to all web authored information. It is highly likely that the courts will determine that educational and industrial Internet-based materials (like websites) must meet ADA guidelines for accessibility. Preparing ourselves now will enable us to meet that accessible format when it is required.

Disabilities that may affect access to your web authored material

1. Vision impairment or blindness

• Low vision: individuals with low vision need to enlarge what they view on their monitor.
• Blindness: blind individuals access information on a computer screen via a "screen reader" such as Super Nova or JAWS.
• Other impairments: such as color blindness ? these individuals may be sensitive to design elements of your web page. Example: a person with red-green color blindness attempting to read green text on a red background.

2. Hearing impairments/deafness

• Audio information will not be heard

3. Manual impairments 

• An individual's ability to select small targets with a mouse or use an imagemap may be very difficult.

4. Cognitive impairments

• A poorly structured web page is not easy for anyone to use. Those individuals with certain cognitive impairments may have difficulty finding or retrieving information from your web page if it is not structured well.

Techniques in web editing to help overcome accessibility barriers

1. Alt Text Tags

• Install Alt tags on inline images for descriptive purposes
• Use Alt tags on image-maps and hyper-images for destination descriptions 
• When using a graphic to create a horizontal break in your web page, include hyphens in the Alt tag text to simulate a horizontal line.

2. Hyperlinks Keep web page filenames short and "of sense" so that links (jumps) to other web pages in your presence provide a concise description of the destination.

   Example: a filename for the Welcome web page of your e-Portfolio:

• Good web page filename: welcome.htm
• "Poor"  web page filename: Welcome to my e-Portfolio.htm

    When using text as hyperlinks

    Avoid "Click here". Instead, use "Go to" or subject hyperlink

3. Lists

When using a bullet or image in a bulleted list, use an * in the Alt text instead of a description like "round red bullet."

4. Tables Text or information in tables can often be difficult to decipher. Ideally a table should be used for tabular-type information and not for ?layout? purposes (such as a navigation menu).

If you must use a table, each cell of the table needs to make sense on its own as screen readers read each cell in the table separately. You may want to consider providing an alternate text-only version of the table?s contents in a single column.

5. Other accessible considerations:

• Always place an appropriate Web Page Title on each web page you author. 
• Avoid using uncommon punctuation marks such a emoticons.
• Use font and background colors that are in contrast (black on white).
• Avoid using frames. Frames can create problems for screen readers that are not easily overcome.
• Use descriptive links. If you do choose to use an image or picture as a link, provide a text link option beneath the graphic.
• Web-based folders and web page filenames should be no more than 3-8 characters in length, no upper case letters within the filename, no spaces.
• All movie or audio/video elements must contain a transcript.