The guidelines as second nature for designers

There are at least 14 ways to make information on the Web more accessible to people with disabilities. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), based in Cambridge, Mass., recently released a list of suggested guidelines designed to make it easier for people who are blind, deaf, or learning disabled to access information on the Web. The guidelines provide priority levels for adoption as well as conformance levels to use as a reference. The guidelines are published on the Web. Suggestions include using text to describe images, and using captions and transcripts for audio and video. Technical devices such as scripts, applets, and plug-ins should be accompanied by alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported. 10 percent to 20 percent of the population has a disability that would influence how they access information on the Internet. W3C accessibility initiative, a group composed of industry, disabled organizations, research centers, and government agencies, would like the guidelines to become second nature for designers, before the technology makes it too complicated to design for broad accessibility. The Center for Applied Special Technology has a tool, "Bobby," that can be used to perform an automated online test, such as this test of the TechWeb site. A website designer said the guidelines and the priority lists, should help designers open the Web up to more people.