Program to make Web friendlier to people with disabilities

From: Assistive Technology News Service - 08/22/98 edition
California Assistive Technology System (CATS)
http://www.catsca.org/

By Jeri Clausing

WASHINGTON -- Because she uses a wheelchair, Judy Brewer says, her college
research was often a series of exhausting trips and challenging acts of
lifting heavy books from high shelves. 

With the invention of the World Wide Web, she says, "I can go flying all over
the world. I can do in one hour what used to take a week. The change is
phenomenal when you have access to the Web."  

And so she hopes to bring that change to more disabled people in her new role
as director of the World Wide Web Consortium's International Program Office
for the Web Accessibility Initiative. 

At a news conference announcing creation of the program office, Brewer
outlined plans for developing guidelines, ratings and education programs on
Web barriers and alternatives for the 750 million people, or about 20 percent
of the population, with disabilities. 

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Web and is director of the World Wide Web
Consortium, also known as W3C, said: "The power of the Web is in its
universality. Access by everyone, regardless of disability, is an essential
aspect. The IPO will ensure the Web can be accessed through different
combinations of senses and physical capabilities, just as other (consortium)
activities ensure its operation across different hardware and software
platforms, media, cultures and countries."  

The program is being sponsored by a partnership of government, industry,
research and disability organizations. The program was endorsed by the White
House and has received $1 million from the National Science Foundation. Other
financing is coming from the Department of Education's National Institute on
Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the European Commission's TIDE
Programme and consortium industry members, including IBM/Lotus Development,
Microsoft, NCR and Riverland Holding. 

"Through the IPO," Brewer said, "we will be coordinating to ensure that needs
related to accessibility are addressed through the consortium's work, and
that the message of an accessible Web is carried as broadly as possible."  

The most obvious Web barriers are to the blind. Though there Web browsing
software exists for the blind, existing versions don't read many Web sites,
Brewer said. But as technology changes and more audio, video and complicated
charts and flashing pictures and graphics are used in Web design, more
barriers are being created to those with hearing, speech and learning
disabilities. 

This not about ensuring that Web publishers offers a text-only alternative.
"It's much broader than that," Brewer said, noting that common and easy
alternatives like captions of audio, descriptions of video and options to
multi-key commands need to be built into Web programs. 

"The biggest barrier is going to be the awareness barrier -- getting
guidelines and the message out to the extent of people involved in the Web,"
Brewer said. "The message we have to spread is that accessibility is vitally
important. It's feasible and will in fact be easy."  

She added, "We have a lot of work, but I'm confident we have a program that
will help us acknowledge greater Web access for everyone." The program will
focus on five areas -- data formats and protocols; guidelines for browsers,
authoring tools and content creation; rating and certification; education and
outreach; and research and development. 

Brewer said she intended to start spreading the message immediately and hoped
that her office would have some initial written guidelines ready within a few
months. The accessibility project has already reviewed the format and
protocol elements to HTML 4.0, the upgrade to the Web's hypertext markup
language, and will be offering feedback on ways to make things like images,
audio and video more accessible to the disabled. 

Brewer said that with legislative initiatives like the Americans With
Disabilities Act, software and hardware manufacturers need to be aware of the
need to make the Internet and computers more accessible in the workplace. 

Tom Kalil, senior director of the White House National Economic Council, said
that the administration strongly supported the project and was looking
forward to the group's issuing guidelines that the federal government could
use to make its own sites and equipment more accessible. 

"When we have formal guidelines, the federal government will be in a much
stronger position to require those in the procurement process," he said. 

Brewer has a background in applied linguistics, education, technical writing,
management and disability advocacy. She previously was project director for
the Massachusetts Assistive Technology Partnership, a federally financed
project that promoted access to technology for people with disabilities. She
serves on a number of advisory committees and boards, including the National
Council on Disability's TechWatch Task Force, the Bell Atlantic Consumer
Advisory Board and the Board of Directors of the Adaptive Environments Center. 

The World Wide Web Consortium was created in 1994 to develop common protocols
that enhance the interoperability and promote the evolution of the World Wide
Web. It is an industry consortium operated jointly by the MIT Laboratory for
Computer Science in the United States, the National Institute for Research in
Computer Science and Control in France and Keio University in Japan.

