AP Wire Article: Web Disability Guidelines Released

Web Disability Guidelines Released 
By PAUL FESTA, CNET News.com 
A Web standards group released guidelines on Thursday for Web page authoring tools to help Web sites become more accessible to people with disabilities. 
The World Wide Web Consortium put its final stamp of approval on the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, which were proposed in November. 
Authoring tools, which include HTML editors and site management tools, automate Web building tasks and eliminate the need to hand-code most Web features and functions. The tools, which also can help developers cope with the discrepancies between the various browsers and browser versions, have become a dominant method of Web development among personal and corporate Web sites. 
The consortium's guidelines come as the Web struggles with the issue of how to provide content that can be accessed by people with various visual and aural disabilities. 
Efforts to promote Web accessibility for the disabled have reached the world's largest online service provider, America Online, through the courts. In November, AOL was sued for not providing access to the blind through its software. 
The recommended guidelines consisting of 28 ``checkpoints,'' and they show how authoring tool distributors can make their own tools useful to disabled people. 
The HTML Writers' Guild, Microsoft, IBM, Lotus and the University of Toronto helped devise the recommendations. 

[Note:  I wasn't involved in writing this article; in fact I wouldn't
have put the HWG's name first!]

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Become AWARE of Web Accessibility!                  http://aware.hwg.org/
The Spring 2000 Virtual Dog Show is now open!     http://www.dogshow.com/

Received on Friday, 4 February 2000 18:44:07 UTC