The W3C has detailed guidelines on accessibility issues at http:/www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT

Bobby is at http://www.cast.org/bobby/

Two useful tools for developing text-based pages are the BBC's Betsie, which parses text pages for maximum usability, and Lynxview, which allows you to see what happens to your page in a text-only browser (and thus in a speech synthesiser)

The Institute on Disabilities of Temple University (Pennsylvania) offers a tool called Wave which analyses Web pages for compliance with guide on accessibility, based on the work of W3C but not endorsed by them.  It is possible to add a browser button to analyse the page currently displayed : there are versions for Explorer, Netscape and Opera.

The HTML Writers Guild's AWARE Center (Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education) is at http://aware.hwg.org 

Belgium

The Belgian organisation Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde has launched the Blindsurfer logo (right, combining a surfboard and white sticks in its design).   Three sites , all in Flemish, have so far applied the design to pages which meet the accessibility criteria : the City of Gent (Stad Gent),  the public sector employment organisation VDAB, and the Dutch-language site of the Ministry of Social Affairs. Details of Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde are available on their site.  You can get further information on a site run by Lolita Lantican and on Rudi Canters' Blind Users' Information Homepage .

Denmark

The Danish National Library for the Blind in Copenhagen has pages in English, and is decribed in the article by Susie Christensen listed 

France

If you read French, Voirplus is a new portal for the blind and partially sighted that opened at the beginning of October 2000 and contains useful materials and links which will be added to as the site develops.  (They have both voirplus.net and voirplus.com as their URL)

Republic of Ireland

Frontend - Usability Engineering & Interface Design is the site of an Irish design company.  Their site includes a range of useful items, including access to a white paper on accessibility issues concerning public sector information in Ireland.   An electronic newsletter is also available.

Until recently this site still had references to the Sydney Olympics as "forthcoming" but it seems to have had a radical update in recent weeks and now has many current and useful articles (June 2001).

United Kingdom

Public sector sites of many types are covered by the Web guidelines issued by the Office of the e-Envoy (and not just .gov.uk sites either - these affect you if you are running a .co.uk, .com or .org(.uk) site funded by public money).  

http://www.iagchampions.gov.uk/iagc/guidelines/websites/websites.htm links to versions in a number of formats.  The second edition of the guidelines were issued in draft in February 2001. 

The Webable! site has some useful links to guidance and white papers at http://www.webable.com/library.html

The RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) has redesigned its  site to support the RNIB Campaign for Good Web Site Design.  Start at http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/) which contains a list of useful links within it.  There is some very sound advice in the new site at http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/hints.htm.

The National Library for the Blind site includes a summary of the WAI guidelines and other information.  Two members of the NLB staff gave a presentation on accessibility issues at a recent seminar organised by UKOLN at the University of Bath.  The NLB has launched a new campaign, Access 1000, to improve access to the Web by blind people, with the aim of creating a portal of 1,000 accessible sites.  The guidelines used by the NLB are available within the Access 1000 area of the site.

The NLBUK site has added an electronic copy of Library Services for Visually Impaired People : a Manual of Best Practice; chapter 14 is Accessible websites : design for all, by Peter Brophy and Jenny Craven.

United States

New guidelines were issued by the Access Board  on December 21, 2000.  These are their final standards for electronic and information technology under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.  A subsidiary page provides further links to technology access and disability sites.

Articles

Brown, Sally.  'Access all areas.'  e-business, April 2001, 18-9

Christensen, Susie.  'How we work to make the Web speak.'  Computers in libraries, 21 (9), (October 2001), 30-34.

Sloan M, 'Web Accessibility and the DDA', Refereed article, 2001 (2) The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT). <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/01-2/sloan.html>