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Normal time and location: LTEF meetings are from 1:30pm to 3:00pm on the second floor of Mann Library.
May 16, 2006 (Tuesday)
Host: George Kozak <gsk5>
Presenters: Diane Kubarek <dmk2>, Camille Lee <cgl8>, Paul Houle <ph18>
An accessible Web is essential for equal opportunities for people with disabilities. It also provides benefits to others, such as older persons with changing abilities. This talk will bring in information from a recent CIT seminar on the topic and from experts in the library to show how web sites can be made more accessible.
Copies of presentation materials:
Government agencies, educational institutes and government contractors are bound to support the rights of disabled people. Over the next few years, Cornell is considering a policy that will extend this to our web presence. A current report on this can be found here:
http://forum.web.cornell.edu/files/Impact_Web_Access_Final.doc
Diane will discuss the policy environment and the forthcoming policy.
Camille will talk about the development process used at the Employment and Disability Institute to insure that web sites and applications that it creates are usable and accessable.
A common first response to demands for accessability is to create a "separate but equal" service for the disabled. However, it's expensive to maintain multiple copies of the system, and the user experience suffers. Sarah Horton's concept of Universal Accessability, which focuses on making systems usable for everyone, is a superior approach which saves time and money while improving quality for everyone.