- From: Terry Brainerd Chadwick <tbchad@tbchad.com>
- Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 17:44:28 -0700
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
>Just last week I had the webmaster in charge of this site argue with me >that including ALT tags on this page was "dated" thinking and not >necessary: >http://www.capta.org/ >And that was after I showed him what the page looked like in Lynx. >Bill Mason Because CAPTA is a non-profit organization purportedly dedicated to the education of all children, there are a couple things you can do, primarily relating to law and policy. 1. Does the California PTA receive any federal funds, especially from the US Department of Education? If so, they are bound by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to follow Section 508 Accessibility standards. Have the webmaster consult the organization's legal counsel on the issue ( or threaten to do it for him). 2. The California PTA in several of its documents--some of which aren't "accessible" in a number of browsers or because they are in PDF--purports to support the Americans with Disabilities Act and its related regulations. Thus, having an inaccessible site violates it's own policies. Bring the issue up to CAPTA's board of directors. Sometimes the threat of legal action is the only way to get people to respond. (By the way, I'm beginning to understand perspective's like the webmaster's. They're not being taught to use basic HTML standards in school. I began developing websites in 1994 and am self-taught, but most of today's webmasters have some sort of academic training. I have been negotiating to teach accessibility to web design and development instructors at a local community college. They admit that they don't teach how to do W3C standard HTML. It's all Frontpage and Dreamweaver and to hell with HTML, accessibility and other standards. AAARRRGH!!!) Terry Terry Brainerd Chadwick, InfoQuest! Information Services mailto:tbchad@tbchad.com 1-503-228-4023 http://www.tbchad.com Providing Internet Audits and Optimization to Improve Performance Accessibility, Analytics, Content, Promotion, Search, Usability
Received on Thursday, 4 July 2002 20:44:26 UTC