NASA's Learning Technologies Project

Herewith is a summary of Web sites that provide information on Web Accessibility for government sites.

COPPA

The main goal of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) is to protect the privacy of children (less than 13 years of age) using the Internet. The law applies to Web sites and online services that are directed to, or that knowingly collect information from children under 13. To inform parents of their information practices, these sites will be required to provide notice on the site and to parents about their policies with respect to the collection, use and disclosure of children's personal information. NASA highly recommends that COPPA notices follow a format similar to that used at the NASA Kids site (http://kids.msfc.nasa.gov/)

Designing for Kids

Millions of children use the Internet today. Many websites target children with educational or entertaining content, and many mainstream wesites are adding "kids' corners" with sections intended for children -- whether as a public service or to build brand loyalty from an early age. Despite this growth in users and services, very little is known about how children actually use websites and how to design sites that will be easy for them to use. NASA Education has kept abreast of research in this area and has purchased a site license and has posted the recent study -- "Usability of Websites for Children: 70 Design Guidelines" (2002) -- onto an internal NASA web site (NASA Learning Technologies). NASA Education offers access to this study for the purpose of the OneNASA Portal:

http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/ltpmgmt/resources/index.html

user: ltp
password: ptl

IMS Guidelines for Creating Accessible Learning Technologies

Developers will find the IMS Guidelines a comprehensive source on accessibility, which includes principles for accessibility in online learning, accessible delivery of text, audio, images and multimedia, using XML for accessibility, and legal issues for accessible distance learning. Developers will find methods for developing a wide range of accessible tools including:

asynchronous communication and collaboration tools
synchronous communication and collaboration tools
interfaces and interactive environments
testing and assessment
authoring tools

http://ncam.wgbh.org/salt

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998, Sec. 508: Electronic and Information Technology (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/508law.html ) specifies that government Web sites and other electronic media have to be accessible to those with disabilities. Although, Section 508 says to make the documents accessible, it does not give specific guidelines to do this.

The Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory Committee's (http://www.access-board.gov/pubs/eitaacrpt.htm) final report on the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 has the following to say about Web accessiblity and how government agencies will meet the requirements of the law under Section 508:

5.3.3.1 Web content shall conform with level 'Double-A,' satisfying all Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints, of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) 'Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT.

5.3.3.2 Tools for authoring Web page and sites (What-You-See-Is-What-I-Get [WYSIWIG] editors, conversion tools, image editors, site management tools) shall comply with Priorities 1 and 2 of the [ latest version at time Access Board does its regulations] of the W3C 'Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines' available at http://www.w3.org/TR.

5.3.3.3. User agents shall comply with Priorities 1 and 2 of the [ latest version at time Access Board does its regulations] of the W3C 'User Agent Accessibility Guidelines' available at http://www.w3.org/TR.

5.3.3.4 If there are navigation links or tool bars at the top and left side of your page, provide a link at the top of the page (a text link or as alt-text on an image) that says "skip over navigation links," and takes the user to the main content, starting point, or headline of the page.

5.3.3.5 If extensive ASCII art is used, then a link shall be provided to allow a user to jump to the end of the ASCII art.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has offered a set of guidelines to change Web pages so that they are accessible to everyone. There are other organizations that have developed guidelines, but most point to W3C as the framework to follow. W3C also provides a checklist to evaluate how your Web pages rate.

W3C's recomendations are as follows:

Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
Don't rely on color alone.
Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.
Clarify natural language usage
Create tables that transform gracefully.
Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully.
Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces.
Design for device-independence.
Use interim solutions.
Use W3C technologies and guidelines.
Provide context and orientation information.
Provide clear navigation mechanisms.
Ensure that documents are clear and simple.

A full explanation of the W3C guidelines is at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/.

The W3C checklist can be located at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/full-checklist.html.

Other accessibility guidelines:

The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research has developed documents that look at the accessibility issue. These documents are on http://www.infouse.com/disabilitydata/addaccess.html.

Bobby is a Web-based tool that analyzes Web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities. It can be a useful "first-pass" tool for evaluating a Web site. Bobby is at http://www.cast.org/bobby/.

The Unified Web Site Accessibility Guidelines are found at http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/html_guidelines/central.htm. The document is old (January 20, 1998), despite its claim to be a work in progress; it refers to the W3C guidelines.

Viewable With Any Browser: Accessible Site Design has a few common-sense suggestions about what can be done to make a site more accessible and cross-platform compatible. This site is found at http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/abdesign.shtml.

IBM has a Web accessibility checklist that also refers to the W3C guidelines. This checklist is found at http://www.austin.ibm.com/sns/accessweb.html#checklist.

IBM has developed a talking Web browser that works in conjunction with Netscape. One can find out more about it at http://www.austin.ibm.com/sns/hprctg.htm.

Curator: Randolph Kim
Responsible NASA Official: Mark Leon
Last Updated: 06/28/2002