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The web: It's not as accessible as you think

It's tempting to dwell on the convenience of the World Wide Web. A seemingly infinite amount of information is just a click away.

Of course, for some of us, clicking is a lot harder than it sounds. If you're quadriplegic, you might use a stick attached to a headband instead of hands to type on a computer keyboard -- and clicking a mouse is out of the question.

And if you can't see, where do you click?

The experiences of history professor John Kasson -- who is visually impaired -- illustrate some of the problems computers pose for the disabled.

He is not completely blind. He suffers from macular degeneration, a deterioration of the retinal lining that blocks central vision.

He looks directly at a visitor.

"Looking right at you there's a Vaseline smudge where your face should be," he said.

Although far from complete blindness, the degeneration still brings hardships: "It's difficult to read; impossible to drive."

The history department has provided hardware and software that makes it easier to for Kasson to do his work. He scans books and student papers, and then a software package that changes text to voice reads them aloud.

But using the web isn't easy for him.

For starters, the reading software isn't flawless.

"It's very fatiguing to have to listen to reading in an uninflected way," Kasson said. "It takes a different kind of attention and it'll miss words. You have to watch for that."

And while he likes the information on web pages, he faces innumerable annoyances accessing it.

It's easiest for him to read and write when his computer display is set for high contrast.

However, some web text disappears in high-contrast mode. Such as the text on his class web pages. Or the article text of The New York Times.

Nor is he pleased with the University's tendency to display online text in school colors.

"Carolina Blue is hard to read," he says.

Efforts under way

Kasson's experiences illustrate some contradictory truths.

"The invention of the computer is clearly one of the best things to happen to visually impaired people," Kasson said.

"But," he added, "most web design is for an 18-year-old with good vision."

Kasson lauds his department for the support it have provided, which has been mostly on "an ad hoc basis." As problems came up, he had to ask for help.

The University started working last fall to ensure that experiences such as Kasson's would not recur. With web resources and computers becoming commonplaces of academic life, numerous University officials began to realize the need to address access problems before they happen, rather than after.

Between taking certain precautions in web site design and construction and investment in specific technologies, web sites can be made accessible to the disabled "without a great deal of effort" said Linda Carl, special assistant to the associate provost for Health Affairs.

Disabled access to web sites is a particular concern of Carl's, because she chairs the Distance Education Policy Steering Committee.

After all, for disabled students taking Carolina courses over the Internet, the web site is their classroom.

Last fall, Carl asked Academic Technology and Networks (ATN) Computer Policy Director Jeanne Smythe to come up with a grant proposal on web access issues in distance education.

Smythe, together with Kathy Thomas and Carolyn Kotlas of ATN's Center for Instructional Technology (CIT), came up with a successful grant proposal for a workshop on improving web accessibility in distance education.

The first workshop was held Jan. 29 and 30. The second will be May 14 and 15. Both workshops were funded by the Office of the Provost.

As a result of these workshops and other initiatives, Carl hopes "that units of the University will be more coordinated in providing [web] access than they have been in the past."

Fortunately, it often takes little effort to make many web sites usable by those who are visually impaired or otherwise disabled.

Actually, most of the access issues in web design are due to visual impairment.

"I would say most reported user problems are due to visual impairment," noted Kotlas.

Access by design

A common corrective for many access problems is to insert a text the computer can display or read next to an information-containing image. You would do this simply by including the HTML tag "ALT=" with a brief descriptive phrase after the equal sign.

For example, on the UNC Summer Reading Program page, after the tag "IMG SRC='horwitz.gif'" which adds a photograph of Confederates in the Attic author Tony Horwitz to the page, is the HTML phrase, "ALT='Photograph of Tony Horwitz'" Unlike the gif, the phrase "Photograph of Tony Horwitz" is intelligible to screen reading software -- and thus available to the visually impaired.

However, a few other common design alterations address access difficulties because of loss of motor skills.

For example, changing the design of a web site so it can be navigated by hitting tab keys automatically makes the site more usable by someone who might have difficulty using a mouse.

"It's simple [to make these changes] -- and very important," Carl said.

One of the reasons it's important is that a new federal regulation mandates that all institutions receiving any kind of government funding, including state-supported schools, must make their web sites accessible to users with disabilities.

"We expect the federal regulations regarding assistive technology to become effective around Sept. 1," said Carl.

The Office of the Provost and the Distance Education Policy Steering Committee will work with ATN to ensure the campus is compliant with these regulations.

Thomas, CIT manager, said she became "gradually aware" that it was imperative to take steps to guarantee accessibility.

"I realized that with the Carolina Computer Initiative, every student would have a computer [and] it was an issue we would have to address."

CIT now offers services to help faculty members make their web sites more accessible to disabled students.

Last January, Disability Services and CIT enacted a procedure to be followed at the beginning of every semester. It begins when Disability Services sends CIT a list of classes with disabled students.

CIT's Kotlas then cross-checks those classes to see which ones rely on web-based materials. Then she will check the web pages using Bobby, a free software program that locates web site features that could pose a problem for disabled users.

Then she sends those analyses to Disability Services. Kessler then contacts the faculty members with less accessible materials, saying, in effect, if you want assistance making your web pages more accessible, CIT can provide it.

In addition to that regular assessment of class web sites, CIT offers four basic services to improve disabled access to web resources.

Kotlas consults individually with faculty members and departmental webmasters and introduces them to tools and other options for improving the accessibility of online resources. She helps them to interpret the Bobby analyses of their web sites, and is available for consultation as they revise their web resources.

In addition to such one-on-one services, Kotlas has tried to make disabled access a widely discussed issue at the University.

Kotlas, Thomas, Smythe and student Ginger Nance did a joint presentation on the issue at the most recent annual retreat of the Carolina Technology Consortium (the association of University computer support staff). Kotlas also did a recent presentation for WebWalkers (an interest group focusing on campus web services).

Kotlas has also started a new listserv -- webaccess -- for discussion of disabled access issues.

Within a half hour of announcing the start of webaccess on the Web Walkers listserv, people were joining.

Virtually walking in their shoes

Although ATN began offering accessibility services only this semester, Kotlas has been preparing herself for work on this issue since February 2000, when she took an online course on web accessibility offered by the HTML Writers' Guild.

Like Thomas, Kotlas realized access would become an issue "with more students getting computers and more teachers putting materials on the web," and that she should be prepared, "because ATN was the natural place to get assistance on the issue."

Smythe first got involved with the issue of disabled access to computer resources last spring.

One of her staff had Parkinson's disease, which can result in trembling hands -- and thus difficulty with typing and other clerical tasks. She acquired Dragon Point n' Speak -- a voice recognition program that enables users to dictate for both word processing and e-mail.

Smythe thus saw firsthand the difficulties a single physical disability could create for someone otherwise perfectly capable of using a computer, and that technology could offer some solutions.

She was instrumental in securing the initial funding for the January workshop on web accessibility.

As ATN computer policy director, she is acquiring a server license for the screen reader software JAWS. A server license is a license for a copy of a software program which multiple people can use simultaneously. This particular license would be for use by Carolina web developers.

Smythe thinks it would be useful for those designing web sites to be able to hear how screen readers interpret their work: in other words, to get the same information as a visually impaired computer user.

"One of the most effective things we can do for people who have never considered this problem is to put them in the place of the disabled," Smythe said.

As with Smythe, the issue of disability has taken on a personal dimension for Kotlas.

Her father, like Kasson, has macular degeneration -- but he can still read on a computer screen if he increases the magnification.

Her mother has arthritis and is partially paralyzed from a stroke -- but she can type with her left hand.

The Internet, particularly e-mail, provided them with an inexpensive means of communication they wouldn't otherwise have.

"I could see what a difference it made in my parents' lives," Kotlas said. "It helped them feel less isolated."

Sponsored by the Technology in Context Consortium http://www.unc.edu/faculty/tic

Writer: Kevin O'Kelly

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