If there is one message that Web designers need to grasp, it is that whatever is put on a Web page should be available to all. The Web designer who puts on an audio clip without the written text or makes a fancy graphic and doesn't put in text describing the graphic is continues the problem of inaccessible Web pages.

A look at college Web sites shows that a lot of Web designers just don't understand what it takes to make an accessible Web site. A random sample showed that of 400 prominent higher education facilities' homepages, only 22% had Bobby approval.

Bobby? That is the best known of the free Web accessibility measures on the Internet. No other accessibility "thumbs-up" programs were on the homepages studied. And, one year later, only 24% of the same homepages had Bobby approval. In another study, only 27% of special education home pages were deemed accessible. #1104

Coombs, N. (2002). Electronic ramp to success: Designing campus web pages for users with disabilities. Educause Quarterly 2, 45-51.

Keyword: Media