Re: making the web available to the disabled

Nicki,

the group you should probably contact is the Education and Outreach group -
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO - who produce the kinds of things you seem to be
looking for. In particular I would suggest the following resources:

The WAI QuickTips - http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips
10 quick reminders of what to do to make your website accessible. They fit in
a business card, and are available in a number of different formats and
languages. This would be my number one stop.

The WAI getting started page - http://www.w3.org/WAI/gettingstarted
This provides more links to the things ytou might be looking for.

The evaluation and repair tools group's list of exising tools -
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/existingtools
This provideslinks and some description for a number of tools useful in
checking the accessibility of content and helping you to repair it, both as
an author and as a user.

The authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working group's list of tool
reviews - http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/reviews
At the moment this page is embryonic, but it provides reviews or partial
reviews of tools against the Authoring Tool Accessibility
Guidelines. (Unfortunately we haven't found any that currently meet the
guidelines - you will have to decide based on your own needs which is the
most helpful for you).

A couple of tools that have come out claiming to have accessibility as a
priority:

HotMetal 5 was released some time ago. I believe that the same features are
available in HotMetal 6. There is a review of HotMetal 5 on the reviews page
mentioned above.

HotDog 6 (from sausage software - http://www.sausage.com ) was released
recently and includes accessibilty checking and help documentation on
producing accesible content.

I am sure there are others, and there are tools that are good for
accessibility but may not make large claims about it. To some extent it
depends on what you want the too lto help you doing and what you are happy to
do for yourself (for example do you want a WYSIWYG editor or a source-code
editor, and many other choices)

Hope this is helpful. Please also bug the developers of your favourite
software to provide more accessibility support - market pressure is what
drives most software companies.

cheers

Charles McCathieNevile

--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001,  Australia 

On Sun, 6 Aug 2000, Veronique May van Eeden wrote:

  Hi there,

  I'm a simple ordinary run of the mill web searcher.  I'm sure that people
  who know all the jargon understand what you mean but if I have to plough
  my way through all the various pieces I'm going to get disheartened and
  give up.  I'd like a simple easy to follow version of what to do and what
  to use (and what it does) to enable me to make my website user friendly
  to all disabled people.

  Please help!!!!!!
  Nicki van Eeden
  South Africa

Received on Sunday, 6 August 2000 11:12:58 UTC