Online learning opens doors...or does it?

Online learning opens doors to students with disabilities, enabling and empowering them to get an education.

Students who are blind no longer need to wait for course books to be read onto tape or to be Brailled; empowering them with independent literacy. Chat rooms and email empower students with hearing and speech impairments to freely communicate with fellow students, and thus, enabling them to be judged on what they say rather than on how they say it. People with fatigue due to medications can work during their daily peak periods, rather than according to rigid schedules.

However, what technology can giveth, technology can also taketh.

If not designed with access in mind, the Web threatens to become the equivalent of a classroom building without an access ramp. Accessible online education benefits students in numerous ways:

• Improves usability for everyone
• Ability to access the site regardless of technology or browser being used
• Access to knowledge creates freedom and power
• Builds self-esteem
• Creates self-sufficiency
• Enables learners to become economic and creative contributors to society

Developing accessible online education has several benefits to education providers:

• Gives them the competitive edge
• Seen as forward-thinking, progressive and innovative
• Seen as community-minded and socially responsible
• Increases public relations
• Attracts wider audience -- increases profits
• Ability to sell to markets requiring accessibility features -- increases sales
• Increases consumer loyalty
• Saves expensive lawsuits

Designing accessible web sites generally increases usability for everyone. Sites do not have to be boring in order to be accessible.

The following guidelines, if implemented correctly, would dramatically increase accessibility.

Use ALT tags with all images

People with visual impairments often use screen readers and refreshable Braille displays when using computers. These technologies cannot read images, graphs, maps and such.

Also, some users with slow modems prefer to surf with graphics turned off to increase downloading time. Others use non-graphical browsers, i.e. Lynx. With the growing popularity of surfing the Web using new technologies that do not yet have graphical capabilities, such as palmtops and cell phones, more and more people are likely to surf without the benefit of graphics.

The ALT (meaning "alternative") tag is a short text description that serves as an alternative to an image. In non-graphical browsers, ALT tags appear in place of the image.

The welcome page to your web site may be an award-winning graphic design, with your logo and name. However, without a simple ALT tag, all the users mentioned here will only see (or hear)

[image]

Not very informative, is it?

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