School Web Sites: Are They Accessible to All?

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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