You are here:

Accessibility of School Districts’ Web Sites: A Descriptive Study
Article

, , , University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States

ITCE Volume 2003, Number 1, ISSN 1522-8185 Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

Full Text

Abstract

Many school districts (SDs) use the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) to disseminate a wide variety of information about things such as district events, policies, and a wide variety of student information. On-line barriers limit the accessibility of the WWW for persons and students with disabilities and thus can limit their access to vital information. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accessibility of SD home pages in the United States and Canada. A total of 120 SD Web sites were located using a popular online school directory and evaluated for accessibility. A software program was used to quantify the number of accessibility errors at each site. The results indicated that most (74.3%) SD home pages had accessibility problems, and the majority of these problems were severe problems that should be given a high priority for correcting. The good news is that the majority of the errors can easily be corrected. The work reflects a need for SDs to examine the accessibility of their home pages. Recommendations for improving accessibility are provided.

Citation

Bray, M., Flowers, C. & Gibson, P. (2003). Accessibility of School Districts’ Web Sites: A Descriptive Study. Information Technology in Childhood Education Annual, 2003(1), 209-221. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved February 27, 2021 from .

© 2003 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

Keywords

References

View References & Citations Map
  1. Button, C., & Wobschall, R. (1994). The Americans with Disabilities Act and assistive technology. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 4 , 196201.
  2. Center for Applied Special Technology (2001). Bobby 3.2 [computer program]. [Online]. Available: http://www.cast.org/bobby/ Chisholm, W. , & Vanderheiden, G. (1999a). Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [Online]. Available: http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
  3. Corry, M.D., Frick, T.W., & Hansen, L. (1997). User-centered design and usability testing of a website: An illustrative cases tudy. Educational Technology Research and Development, 45(4), 65-72.
  4. Council for Exceptional Children. (1994). Planning accessible conferences and meeting: An ERIC/OSEP information brief for conference planners. Reston, VA: Author.
  5. Microsoft Corporation (2001). Microsoft announces strategic relationship to offer HiSoftware’s new website accessibility verification tool for FrontPage [Online]. Available: http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/ Press /2001 /Sep01 /09-24H iSof twarePR.asp
  6. University of Minnesota (2001). Web66: International School WebSite Registry [Online]. Available: http://web66.coled.umn.edu/schools.html
  7. WorldWide Web Consortium (1999). Web accessibility initiative (WAI): HTML author guide l ines—vers ion 1.0 [On-line]. Available: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WD-WAI-HAG.html

These references have been extracted automatically and may have some errors. Signed in users can suggest corrections to these mistakes.

Suggest Corrections to References