- From: Terry Brainerd Chadwick <tbchad@tbchad.com>
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 21:17:20 -0800
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
I will be participating in a roundtable on accessibility next week and want to specifically address the issues of accessibility for people with cognitive and learning difficulties. Like many others, I have been focusing my website accessibility training on the WCAG and Section 508 standards. Last week's discussion on inclusion, and the lack thereof for people with learning disabilities, along with Kynn's statement today that all-text sites aren't accessible to people with reading difficulties, has piqued my interest in the subject. I attended a Section 508 training on October 30th that had accessibility experts from the US Access Board, Department of Justice, and Department of Education and raised the question of website accessibility for people with learning difficulties. The response was that Section 508 doesn't cover accessibility issues for people with learning and cognitive difficulties because it is extremely hard (impossible?) to define what is accessible for someone with a second grade reading level, for someone else who has autism ... Is there some way to define some standards that encompass the diverse needs of people with cognitive and learning difficulties? I have read the W3C WAI document on "How People with Disabilities Use the Web." It provides a couple of scenarios that address this issue. I would like to hear more examples about how people with cognitive and learning difficulties use the web, as well as some ideas of standards and guidelines that I can give web technicians . The thing I hear most from web technicians -- I'm using the term technician because most of the people I'm working with are maintaining websites, adding and updating content, rather than doing the design -- is "Just tell me how to code it." I know that making websites accessible is much more than "just coding," but I would like to be able to provide some coding related guidelines on this issue. Terry Chadwick InfoQuest! Information Services mailto:tbchad@tbchad.com
Received on Thursday, 1 November 2001 00:17:01 UTC