Accessibility
Accessibility FAQ
Q What is Accessibility?
A
In the United States, Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, a civil rights law for people with disabilities, said:
All newly constructed places of public accommodation and commercial facilities must be accessible to individuals with disabilities to the extent that it is not structurally impracticable. Web accessibility means access to the Web by everyone, regardless of disability.
Now, when you go to a movie, you find assistive hearing devices; catch a ball game at Comerica Park, and ramps and rails are there to assist you; visit a friend in the hospital, and the elevator buttons feature Braille. Ramps, curb cuts, widened doorways - these features all exist thanks to the 1990 law, which explicitly states that every applicable building built in the US after January 1992 must include them. The Internet is no exception. It, too, is a public space, and the people who write the specifications for HTML hope to make it universally accessible.
Web accessibility includes:
- Web sites and applications
- that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with;
- Web browsers and media players
- that can be used effectively by people with disabilities, and
- that work well with assistive technologies that some people with disabilities use to access the Web;
- Web authoring tools, and evolving Web technologies
- that support production of accessible Web content and Web sites, and
- that can be used effectively by people with disabilities.
