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| Research article summary (published 30 Dec 2002): |
Electronic doors to education: study of high school website accessibility in Iowa.
Full Abstract
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in all aspects of daily life, including education, work, and access to places of public accommodations. Increasingly, these antidiscrimination laws are used by persons with disabilities to ensure equal access to e-commerce, and to private and public Internet websites. To help assess the impact of the anti-discrimination mandate for educational communities, this study examined 157 website home pages of Iowa public high schools (52% of high schools in Iowa) in terms of their electronic accessibility for persons with disabilities. We predicted that accessibility problems would limit students and others in obtaining information from the web pages as well as limiting ability to navigate to other web pages. Findings show that although many web pages examined included information in accessible formats, none of the home pages met World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for accessibility. The most frequent accessibility problem was lack of alternative text (ALT tags) for graphics. Technical sophistication built into pages was found to reduce accessibility. Implications are discussed for schools and educational institutions, and for laws, policies, and procedures on website accessibility.Copyright 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Author information
Author/s: Klein, David (D); Myhill, William (W); Hansen, Linda (L); Asby, Gary (G); Michaelson, Susan (S); Blanck, Peter (P);
Affiliation: Law, Health Policy & Disability Center, University of Iowa College of Law, Iowa City, IA 52242-1113, USA. david-klein@uiowa.edu
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Journal: Behavioral sciences & the law (Behav Sci Law), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2003-; vol 21 (issue 1) : pp 27-49
Dates: Created 2003/02/11; Completed 2003/06/17; Revised 2006/11/15;
PMID: 12579616, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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