Is your website reaching all your patrons? ADA compliance revisited.

Two gentlemen from OSU walked us through Section 508 compliance. This is particularly important for higher education institutions because of HB 2197 (EITA)

Roy Degler talked about the tools non-web developers can utilize to check the compliance level of their websites -- and you can see his presentation at ada.atyourlibrary.com

Kevin Sesock in the IT accessibility department at OSU talked about the different special needs web users may have -- the list included things such as:

• Blindness / low vision
• Dyslexia
• Deaf / hard of hearing
• Limited Mobility
• Epilepsy
• Cognitive impairments

And he discussed how each one of these impacts users ability to use a website -- and considering 23% of Oklahomans have a disability (12.3% have limited internet access because of that disability) it could directly relate to how your patrons view, or rather not view, your websites and library services.

Some of the websites the two gentlemen shared with the audience to help test your sites accessibility include:

• http://www.vischeck.com/
• http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html
• http://hisoftware.com/hmcc
• http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/magpie/

Of course there are many more sites linked to from Roy's presentation. So how does your site meet the needs of those with limited internet accessibility?