Computing for Faculty and Staff

Website Accessibility Resources

Statistics

Disability in Canada: A 2001 Profile (PDF: 4.1M)

About Accessibility

What is Accessibility?
Accessibility requires that designers not only conform to standards but also understand how people with disabilities access electronic information using assistive devices. This quick start guide includes the following topics:

• defining disabilities
• assistive technologies
• accessibility standards
• why is accessibility important?
  

Section 508 Explained
In the United States, Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act mandates that web content maintained by the federal government must be made accessible to people with disabilities. This article provides a basic overview of Section 508 requirements.

How Do I Create an Accessible Site?
Accessibility is more than just meeting standards. Designers must make thoughtful decisions about which technologies and techniques to use. This article provides an overview of considerations designers must make when building accessible websites.

How Do I Validate My Site for Accessibility?
Validation for accessibility should include a combination of automated and manual checks. Like a spell checker, the automated tools look for obvious problems with the accessibility of a page, while the manual tools generally look for continuity and flow of content. This article introduces you to some of the automated checking tools as well as ways to perform manual validation.

Best Practices for Web Accessibility Design and Implementation (PDF: 228K)
This document outlines a process-based approach to implementing accessibility design.

Standards and Guidelines:

• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0
• Canada Common Look and Feel (CLF) for the Internet
• US Section 508
  

Web Rich Media and Accessibility

Captioning

Closed Captions for Web Multimedia
Microsoft Accessibility describes technology used to caption multimedia elements on the Internet. This site explains Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI), a format used to add captions and audio descriptions to multimedia on the Internet.

Closed Captioning Web
This site provides a comprehensive list of captioning service agencies under the heading, “Services.” There is detailed information about laws and cases pertaining to captioning, captioned movies, and links related to hearing impairment and captioning.

Closed Captioning FAQ
This site provides in-depth information on captioning laws, terminology, procedures, and equipment. Also included are guidelines to help users choose what kinds of captioning best serve their purposes and hints on how to select a captioning service agency for real-time captioning.

Flash

Flash Accessibility

Best Practices for Accessible Flash Design (PDF: 643K)
This white paper describes the framework to approach accessible design using Macromedia Flash. The purpose of this document is to help designers and developers understand and implement accessibility best practices in their web applications.

PDF

Adobe Reader 7.0 Accessibility FAQ (PDF: 210K)

Reading Accessible PDF Documents with Adobe Reader 7.0: A Guide for People with Disabilities (PDF: 3.8M)
This document tells you how to use or customize the accessibility features of Adobe Reader 7.0 to enhance your reading experience with a screen reader or other assistive technology. It also describes how to use the application’s built-in Read Out Loud feature in lieu of a screen reader. In addition, this document contains general information about what accessibility is, what makes a PDF document accessible or inaccessible, and how to determine the extent to which a PDF document is accessible.

Creating Accessible PDF Documents with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 (PDF: 10.3M)
This guide provides a framework and instructions for properly preparing PDF documents and fillable PDF forms for access by users with disabilities.

Accessibility at York

York Web Accessibility Site

The Duty to Accommodate Students with Disabilities (PDF: 124K)
by Office of the Ombudsperson