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 Phone:

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: 

Resources: The UCSB Web Standards Group has put together a very comprehensive set of documents for helping you achieve your accessibility goals:

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 accounts, e.g.  See for audio alternative CAPTCHAs if you really need to use themhttp://recaptcha.net

Marketing Web Accessibility to Your Department  Getting from No or I Don't Know to Yes 1. Identify key players. 2. Evaluate Web site(s) for accessibility. 3. Make a list of things to do. 4. Work with key players to develop a policy/commitment. 5. Map out an implementation plan. 6. Update your web site. 7. Publicize your success. 8. 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

Questions and Answers