JSET

JSET Articles Index

Volume 21 Number 3

School Web Sites: Are They Accessible to All?
Julie A. Wells
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Ann E. Barron
University of South Florida

Abstract

In 2002, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that 99% of public schools had Internet access and 86% of those schools had a web site or web page (Kleiner & Lewis, 2003). This study examined accessibility issues on elementary school homepages. Using a random sample of elementary school web sites, the researchers documented accessibility errors and warnings related to Section 508 of the American Rehabilitation Act and Priority 1, 2, and 3 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The researchers used WebXACT (WebXACT, 2005) and the Accessibility Toolbar (National Information and Library Service, 2005) to evaluate the web sites. Findings indicate that 91% of the web sites had at least one accessibility error related to Section 508, and 84% of web sites had at least one Priority 1 error. The major sources of these errors were related to text equivalents (Alt tags) for images. Issues related to font sizes, screen resolutions, contrast, style sheets, and flicker are also discussed.

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