|
|
  |
   
|
Introduction Santa Monica College has a legal and ethical mandate to ensure its web pages are accessible to everyone, including students with disabilities. Inadvertently, web pages can create accessibility obstacles for students and other members of our campus community with disabilities. For example, sites with no text equivalent for information presented visually (e.g. images, graphs, videos) exclude people who are blind. Sites with small text that is fixed in size cause difficulties for those with low vision and/or visual perception problems. Similarly, web sites with audio content exclude people who are hearing impaired if there is not text equivalent for the audio.When people talk of "web accessibility" they often mean design for blind and vision-impaired users, one important group who will benefit from universal design principles. Blind users can't see any of your animation, colors, graphics, or text layout. And visually-oriented input systems such as a mouse will be useless to them --they will navigate and provide input via the keyboard. Their access to the web is likely through a screen reader that reads aloud the contents of the screen. To see how a blind person uses a screen reader to access a web page, click on the "Introduction to the Screen Reader" link at the University of Wisconsin's Do-It Accessibility and Technology Page. Here at Santa Monica College,
the Alternate Media Specialist, Irene Wolt, or High Tech Training Center
Specialist Ellen Cutler, can also demonstrate how a screen reader works
with your web page. They are available to help Santa Monica College staff
and faculty to ensure the accessibility of college sites. They can review
these sites in light of the accessibility laws and help remedy any accessibility
obstacles. This may include the creation of captions for any videos included
on a web site. If you would like them to review your site or have any
questions about the accessibility of your site, please contact Irene (x8934
or wolt_irene@smc.edu) or Ellen (x4496, cutler_ellen@smc.edu). Basic
Accessibility Tips Multimedia |
 |
Copyright © 2004 Santa Monica Community College |
