FOKUS-nyt........... 1-1999

........ISSN 0906-0634.........

Copyright © Valdemar Thomsen 1999. Editor since 23 June 1989

Is Information Society accessible for everyone?

How do we improve Webcontent? A view from Valdemar Thomsen.

In the US a large minority of disabled was helped, when the new piece of civil rights legislation
was passed in the Amaricans with Disability Act of 1990.(ADA).
This year the US attorney general sent a memo on 2 April to all Federal agencies saying that they need to evaluate their
institutions "electronic and information technology" for accessibility!

The Rehabilitation Act Amendmants of 1996 Section 508 became the answer to what federal agencies should develop, procure, maintain or use electronic and IT, because this technology must be accessible to federal employees with disabilities.
Further on is it understood to include Webpages to Section 508, which means that federally run sites must be designed accordingly to accessibility guidelines.
This include also vendors,whom must follow these guidelines in order for their services to be produced.
US have created a Access Board, which creates these guidelines and will control all website in the US after 2 August 2000.
Websites will be subject to administrative complaints and private lawsuits by employees and members of the public, if it has not followed the AB Guidelines.

W3C have on the basis described in "The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" and worked out the list of techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
This is the draft document of 43 pages documentation for W3C members and their interested parties and published by W3C`s Web Accessibility Initiative.(WAI).
W3C-WAI have worked out a checklist of checkpoints for Web content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 on 4 pages.
See also W3C WAI Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines on 14 pages.
Each web content developer must satisfy these checkpoints as the basic requirements for some groups to be able to use web documents.

Author Valdemar Thomsen, LAOKON July 1999.

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