In 1973, Section 508 was an original amendment but there are more and more technologies are so rapidly and revised to add 1986 then again in 1998. It is not same as ADA (American Disability Act)
In 1996, President Bush signed ADA to courage all handicapped people to gainfully seek employment for private, public companies, and at all government bodies including the federal government. This law was to provide assurance that their rights to be gainfully employed will be protected. This includes requirement that interpreters are provided to assist the hearing impaired who rely on sign language on the job for interviews and meetings. This law also allows hearing impaired Americans the right to access public schools meetings, or hearings at courts by asking before that interpreters be provided. Most TV Stations provide closed-captioning shows and movies due to the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) requirements.
There are some limited in variety of physical access which are:
Some elderly people with eye problem may not be able to read very well would need technology to be able to read the web. People with Usher’s syndrome or visual limitations such as tunnel vision will need easy to read large text or means to expand text size to their comfortable level to enable them to read. As I mentioned above there are hearing impaired people who will need to be able to read texted messages in lieu of sound. They must clear and consistent design and navigation very well.
For deaf people will require having caption for audio or text transcript from TV News or Oprah or any kind of TV News do provide.
For blind people will need to zoom with text like magnifying glass without images and some with images. They tend to have large text depend on resize text or images and areas on web pages or turning off background images or changing text & background colors with their option access under internet tools option for window computer and for apple computer use universe access to use.
Some people could not use their keyword or mouse device at all. Like they might have amputated their arms or hands due to cancer or by war or any reasons or born with cerebral palsy. They can use with their eyes tech stimulate with keywords without type on it. Sort of Augment but their brain still function very well. Some of them could not speak but can hear what people will say. Their computer will able to do voice for regular people to understand what augment people are trying to say.
For web/content/tool developers need to check and how to use some information resources.
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) documents
www.w3.org/WAI/intro/atag
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) documents
www.w3.org/WAI/intro/uaag
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) documents
www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag
“How People with Disabilities Use the Web”
www. w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/
“The Relationship Between Accessibility and Usability”
www.uiaccess.com/andusability.html
All you would need to recruit people with disabilities such blind, deaf, people with augment devices, etc to be participants in your focus group to test which you should improve or redesign websites.
“Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation”
www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users
All Accessibility Barriers on Existing Sites do have XHTML and CSS have few barriers. People must fix their websites, which are: data tables, forms, and scripts that will break barrier for all people with disabilities as well. For CSS required to have Screen without images for blind or large text same thing with mobile devices have limit images too.
WebAim Section 508 Checklist
http://www.webaim.org/standards/508/checklist
HTML Best Practices
http://html.cita.uiuc.edu/
To analyze some websites
www.wave.webaim.org
National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM),
http://ncam.wgbh.org/webaccess/favelet/
You can use Section 508 Toolbar for IE and Firefox by RampWeb (www.rampweb.com)
www.rampweb.com/Accessibility_Resources/Section508/
Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) homepage
www.gawds.org
Web Site Accessibility Tools
http://websitetips.com/accessibility/tools/#freetools
Zoom Layouts
www.alistapart.com/articles/lowvision/
Javascript- Access Matters
www.access-matters.com/
Accessibility Software Information
Where all these companies can afford, it is not that cheaper but you can write IRS off for purpose to use for your business.
Bobby: Watchfire’s Bobby
(www.watchfire.com/products/webxm/bobby.aspx, $299) spiders through a website and tests on a page-by-page basis to see if it meets several accessibility requirements, including readability by screen readers and the provision of text equivalents for all images, animated elements, and audio and video displays. Bobby can see local web pages, as well as web pages behind your firewall. It performs more than 90 accessibility checks.
InFocus: InFocus Desktop (http://ssbtechnologies.com, $1,795 for corporate customers), from the SSB BART Group, was the first commercial web accessibility software and remains the market leader. It offers more than 115 accessibility tests, encompassing all major accessibility standards, with a high level of automation.
LIFT Machine: LIFT Machine (http://usablenet.com, LIFT Online, $999), from UsableNet, is a server-based application that automatically scans internal and external websites for more than 140 quality, accessibility, and usability issues. It then generates a variety of web-based reports for both executives and individual content creators.
Ramp Ascend: Deque’s Ramp Ascend (http://deque.com, $1 ,499) includes full capabilities for adding SMIL captioning to multimedia, ensures web animations are safe, and provides comprehensive table remediation to even the most complex, n-dimensional tables. It includes plug-ins for Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage, and Mercury Interactive TestDirector 8.
WebKing: Parasoft’s WebKing (www.parasoft.com, contact info@parasoft.com for prices) allows users to record critical user click paths by following them in a browser. Then it automatically configures and executes functional/regression tests that verify paths and page contents while ignoring insignificant differences. WebKing’s static analysis identifies client-side code that does not comply with Section 508 accessibility rules, as well as pages with broken links, XML problems, and spelling errors.
WebXM: Watchfire’s WebXM (www.watchfire.com, contact sales@watchfire.com for prices) provides software and services to identify, measure, and prioritize accessibility and compliance risks that exist on corporate web properties.
Or you can ADD-ons extension from Firefox Accessibility Extension from Firefox to put on your Firefox toolbar to help you.
Citied:
Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance by Jim Thatcher, Michael R. Burks, Christian Heilmann, Shawn Lawton Henry, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Patrick H. Lauke, Bruce Lawson, Bob Regan, Richard Rutter, Mark Urban, and Cynthia D. Waddell.
12/14/2009-Recently new information:
Web Accessibility No Longer An Afterthought by CNET.com
