Since 2006, campus and Office of the President personnel in IT and disabled student services have been working to develop a universitywide policy to guide the way UC presents material on its Web sites.
As more information and class resources are provided online, it is essential to have that material available to everyone including those with vision and hearing disabilities, said Yvonne Tevis, executive assistant from the OP Information Resources and Communications department.
"I started getting queries about what we should do to implement accessibility standards," said Tevis. "The campus people were asking for some kind of guidance."
The IT accessibility initiative has its origins in a 2001 letter then-UC President Richard Atkinson sent to the chancellors affirming the university's commitment to accessibility. In that letter he called for "unfettered access to the benefits created by the new technologies."
With that commitment in mind, IR&C with assistance from a group of campus and UCOP personnel developed draft policy and guidelines that establish principles for accessibility and direct UC to use technical standards found in Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Section 508 is becoming widely accepted as a general community standard for IT accessibility. The standards require that Web pages be designed in ways that allow assistive technology devices, commonly called screen readers, to read the page content to the user.
In addition to proposing policy, the group working on IT accessibility is exploring options for providing resources that will help campuses implement standards. They developed a Web site with helpful design tips and links to additional information and also are exploring useful tools, such as software that tests Web sites for accessibility.
Advances in technology have opened up worlds of information to the disabled, said Tevis, but if that technology isn't accessible then the advances have just set up new barriers. Any efforts to enhance access benefit not only the disabled but society as well.
"The Web brings all this information to the disabled, and with screen readers and other assistive technology, they can more easily access that information and contribute their skills and talents to the community," she said.More people are using assistive technology and the need is growing as the population ages.
At UC Berkeley, assistive technology specialist Lucy Greco, works with about 300 to 400 students a year, evaluating their disabilities, determining if there is a technology that will aid their learning experience and helping them find funding to purchase it. The most common disabilities she encounters are learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorders and dyslexia, functional disabilities such as paraplegia, quadriplegia and repetitive use injuries as well as low-vision and blindness. Improving Web site accessibly helps all users, she said, not just those with disabilities.
A volunteer Berkeley campus group, including someone who is color blind, one with learning disabilities and an expert coder, do free Web site accessibility evaluations for campus departments and programs. Greco is hoping that once the systemwide policy is in place, that kind of work will get more funding.
"Having a policy will give me so much more fuel and ammunition to promote this," she said. "At Berkeley it's already happening, but a systemwide policy will give the efforts so much more momentum."
The UC guidelines propose a phased timeline for implementing the policy. Campuses have provided initial feedback about the draft policy and guidelines, which will be revised in response to campus concerns and then presented to the Academic Senate and the chancellors for formal review and consideration.
"It's about creating an inclusive environment," said Patrick Burke, a coordinator from UCLA's Disabilities and Computing Program who has been involved in the accessibility effort. "It's the World Wide Web and the public face of the university should be accessible to the world. For somebody not to be able to find out what the university is doing or not be able to apply just because the (Web site) coding was not done correctly to me is a big problem."
Visit the IT Accessibility homepage to learn more.