Accessibility Standards

People Using Assistive Technologies

The primary goal of the guidelines in this section is to promote accessibility for people using assistive technology. However, following them will make Web content more available to all users, no matter what platform they are using or the conditions in their current environment. Following these guidelines also helps to ensure that overall usability increases, and that people find the information they are seeking rapidly.

The W3 Consortium provides guidelines that explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. The guidelines are intended for all Web content developers (page authors and site designers) and for developers of authoring tools. These guidelines do not discourage content developers from using images, and video, but rather explain how to make multimedia content more accessible to a wide audience. W3C also maintains an entire second site, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to examine this question.

The HTML Writers Guild's Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education (AWARE) Center intends to act as a central resource for publishers that wish to learn about web accessibility. This page features a comprehensive list of important resources.

WebABLE is a leading provider of Web accessibility technology, consulting, and training. The WebABLE! library is a collection of books, press releases, white papers, articles, plans, standards, reference guidelines, and journals that focus on accessibility, assistive and adaptive technology for people with disabilities. They also invite readers to contribute to this library.

Access Adobe is a resource designed to help people with visual disabilities work more effectively with Adobe Acrobat software and PDF files. It provides tools to help visually disabled users whose screen reader software is not compatible with the Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0. These online tools convert Adobe PDF documents into HTML or ASCII text, which can then be read by a number of common screen reading programs that synthesize text as audible speech (these tools may also be of use to general developers who want to convert documents into open formats for other reasons). The site also includes white papers and FAQs in HTML format and links to other useful resources on the Web.

In 1988, Microsoft became involved in accessibility issues and since then, has worked hard to improve the accessibility of products as well as create new and better technologies that others can use. This page of guidelines lists news & events, training programs, products and aids, development guidelines.

IBM's Accessibility Center www-3.ibm.com/able/guidelines.htm provides guidelines, checklists and techniques for a variety of web-development related issues.

Bobby is a free service designed to help Web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities. The online version of Bobby will test one page at a time; for publishers who wish to test entire site as a batch, there is also a downloadable version of Bobby.

People Using Older Technology

A document or program is backwards compatible if it runs not only on the computer for which it was designed, but also on smaller and older models. Upwards compatibility, on the other hand, refers to documents and software that function not only on the computers for which they were originally designed, but also on newer and more powerful models. Upward compatibility is important because it means that data will continue to function without the need for converting it.

Publishers need to keep both kinds of compatibility in mind when planning and releasing new electronic publications. Issues of backwards compatibility can generally be dealt with if publishers adhere to the accessibility and usability guidelines outlined above; upwards compatibility becomes of interest as soon as a publisher starts to consider archiving its publications for posterity.