Home > Medical Billing Resource Center > Website Accessibility
Is
Your Site Accessible to Disabled Visitors?
by
Kevin P. Richardson, President, MedRocket, Inc.
About the Author - Kevin Richardson is a healthcare marketing consultant, executive coach, and writer who provides fresh perspectives and expertise about online healthcare marketing. Sign up for his FREE "MedRocket Ezine" newsletter and discover how to profitably attract and serve healthcare consumers online. Subscribe at http://www.medrocket.com.
If
you're one of the Web site administrators for approximately 20,000
U.S. government Web sites, it's likely that you haven't had a lot
of sleep lately. You see, they've been working on retrofitting their
Web sites to comply with the government's standards for Web site
accessibility by the June 21, 2001 deadline.
Their mandate is our opportunity.
The law, known as Section 508, refers to the section of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. It requires any United States Federal Agencies with Web sites to make those sites accessible to individuals with disabilities.
There
are many reasons why every site should be concerned about making
their pages accessible according to the standards. These
standards will help users who:
may
not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some
types of information easily or at all;
may
have difficulty reading or comprehending text;
may
not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse; and
may
have a text-only screen, or may be using a screen reader to view
the web.
Adjusting our sites in some relatively minor ways can enable us to reach out to millions of people with disabilities that have difficulties accessing information.
But, do we have to?
The ultimate Section 508 regulations will be adopted by many states as well as by most educational institutions receiving funds from the U.S. Department of Education.
I have read several interpretations of the law, including some that say the law applies to you if you are affiliated with any group that receives funding from the U.S. government, including colleges, research programs, and others. I can see some people starting to squirm already.
At the very least, complying voluntarily to the section 508 provisions assists organizations in meeting their obligations under section 504 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (reasonable accommodation, program access, effective communication, etc.). Section 504 prohibits organizations that receive federal funds from discriminating against otherwise qualified individuals on the sole basis of a handicap.
But rather than asking "Does Section 508 affect us and our Web site and do we have to comply?" we should be asking, "What do we have to do to make our site accessible to everyone, including disabled Web visitors?"
It's the right thing to do. It most likely won't change the appearance of your Web site one iota. And it needn't represent an undue burden on any organization. Besides, most of the guidelines for compliance are really just common sense and also good Web design.
Take
a look at this Web page describing some of the changes that can be
made to a Web site to bring it up to Section 508 standards:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/report/web.htm
Viewing Your Site from a Different Perspective
One way to see how useful your site would be for a visually-impaired person, or someone using older technology, is to view your Web site with a text-only browser such as the Lynx Viewer.
You can download a copy for free at: http://lynx.browser.org
Alternatively, you can use your graphical Web browser (Netscape or IE) and visit http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html , which has a useful feature to view a Web page as if you were using the Lynx browser.
Also check out http://www.webaim.org/ -- WebAIM -- Web Accessibility in Mind -- designed to improve accessibility to online learning opportunities for all people; in particular to improve accessibility for individuals with disabilities. They have many useful resources for improving and testing your site for accessibility.
