Web Accessibility News
UIC Presenting at 2008 Accessing Higher Ground Conference in Boulder, Colorado, November 13-14
Janet Peters, Member of the UIC Web Accessibility Commitee and Project Coordinator of the DBTAC: Great Lakes ADA Center, and Kevin Price, Chair of the Web Accessibility Committee and Assistive Technologist with the Disability Resource Center are presenting at the 2008 Accessing Higher Ground Conference in Boulder Colorado. Their presentation is called "A Case Study of Implementing Website Accessibility at a University". This presentation will concern our UIC efforts toward making campus sites more accessible.
Accessing Higher Ground focuses on the implementation and benefits of Assistive Technology in the university and college setting for people with sensory, physical and learning disabilities. Other topics include legal and policy issues, including ADA and 508 compliance, and making campus media and information resources - including Web pages and library resources - accessible.
National Federation of the Blind and Target Agree to Class Action Settlement
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and Target announced 8/27/08 that they have settled a class action lawsuit regarding access to the Target.com Web site by people who are blind. Here is a summary put together by Sean Keegan:
- No admission that Target.com is in any way inaccessible or violates any laws or statues
- Target will ensure that Target.com will meet their online assistive technology guidelines
- Target will make changes to Target.com identified by the NFB to support access
- Personnel from NFB and Target will meet every 6 months to discuss NFB's recommended updates to Target's online assistive technology guidelines
- Target will make payments to NFB for monitoring and training
- Target will pay $6 million as part of the class action settlement
Jim Thatcher has a brief write-up of this at his site (http://jimthatcher.com/news.htm). You can also get the legal settlement from http://www.nfbtargetlawsuit.com/final_settlement.htm.
UIC Webmaster Email Discussion List: Not Just for Webmasters
Looking to keep up with new developments on posting UIC information online? You don't have to be a Webmaster to subscribe to this list. The UIC Webmasters discussion list, named "UIC-Webmasters," has been set up for communication concerning information, issues, and techniques related to posting UIC content online and this includes Web accessibility issues.
Universal Design Discussion List
- To subscribe to uic-webmasters, send a note to listserv@uic.edu and type in the message body:
subscribe uic-webmasters Your Name - If you want to send a note to all subscribers, send it to: uic-webmasters@listserv.uic.edu.
Illinois IT Accessibility Act (IITAA) Non-Technical Overview
The Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) will be in effect on August 20, 2008 and UIC is required to comply. The IITAA requires Illinois agencies and universities to ensure that their web sites, systems, and other information technologies are accessible to people with disabilities. Do you know how the Act impacts you and your department?
The outline of the IITAA Web Accessibility Non-Technical Overview is now posted online in Microsoft Word format. (IITAA2.doc, 39 kb)
Illinois IT Accessibility Act Technical Guidelines Training
The outline of the IITAA Web Accessibility Technical Trainings is now posted online in Microsoft Word format. (IITAA.doc, 102 kb)
New UIC IITAA Compliant Accessibility Template Developed
A new UIC Web Accessibility template has been developed by Lloyd Nicks from the UIC College of Dentistry. It is a functionally accessible template that includes many accessibility features such as Skip to Main Content, use of CSS, labeled graphics, accessible page structure and Webmaster contact information for access to legacy pages, All the files are zipped together in one package for developer usage. Please contact us with feedback on the template.