The Internet is an important resource for information, education, services, and shopping — therefore, accessibility on the Internet is every bit as critical as it is in a store or restaurant.
What is ‘accessibility’?
Accessibility is not just about webpage design and web interfaces. It is also about using open standards that require no proprietary software, or providing the same content in an alternative format.
Where do we stand in higher education?
The issue of accessibility is especially critical in our institutions of higher education. Students have a right to choose the computer platform and operating system they prefer — for security, for their budget, or just plain preference.
Educational institutions have a bigger responsibility than anyone to make all their technologies (online coursework, documents, web portals, student records) accessible and open-standards (online coursework, documents, web portals, student records). But they are unfortunately the worst. We must require our educational institutions to conform to the same accessibility standards as our federal (U.S.) government!
No student must be required to buy or download a particular computer or software, or to use particular software outside the classroom. Worse, have you ever taken an online, and not been able to use all parts of the course (like, um, the TESTS) because the commercial courseware (which you had to pay extra to use) just doesn’t work right, and the company doesn’t even answer your emails? When you are a college student, this is not funny!
The exception to requiring proprietary software is obviously when the point of a course is to learn specific software (for example, in CS/IT classes), and even then, only when the activity requires it! (In other words, just because a student is learning Windows Server 2003 doesn’t mean that they can’t use Kontact on Linux or Thunderbird on any platform to email their instructor.) Likewise, electronic graphic design courses should not feature entirely on 1 proprietary software package (Photoshop, Quark Express), but should include at least one free, non-proprietary package (IrfanView, the GIMP) — which ensures the student does not have to purchase said software to continue learning, and that the student actually learns transferrable skills and not just a software interface and software-specific features.
Colleges and Universities have the most notoriously non-functional bureaucracy among all institutions, and the most technologically uneducated and uninterested staff to boot. Only federal regulations will change their restrictive and ancient attitude towards technology. So, we should continue to push for change, and in the meantime see to it that our own projects “treat others as we would like to be treated”!
What about the personal/information website?
This also means that PDF documents are also offered as HTML (there’s absolutely no excuse for this proprietary focus, there are tens of free PDF-to-HTML/XML converters out there. The most popular free programs are heavily used even by professionals, but it seems that non-experts in education think they must buy expensive, brand-name software.
People, even casual website designers, need to not offer proprietary-only videos to vistors — either use a standard technology, or provide a range of choices (visit any Hollywood movie’s page of “trailers” and see the choices they give you, for example). Anyone with information that could be deemed important should be designing and testing for accessibility. Certainly, people who call themselves “Professional Graphic (or Web) Desigers” should not do so unless they can demonstrate a knowledge of accessibility issues and the techniques to achieve accessibility. It doesn’t boil down to just putting “alt” text in images!
Our purpose?
So, we must continue to work for standards and accessibility, both in terms of those who must use assistive technologies, and in making information and services accessible to all people, regardless of income, country, platform, or preference.
To that end, I’ll continue to post what I learn here…tricks I’ve devised or adapted, software I’ve found, guidelines and tutorials and links. Other amateur and professional designers are welcome to read, learn, contribute via comments, and critique! Just be patient…at current, I do this part-time, so I can’t promise to post every day.
