[Accessibleweb] "School web sites fail accessibility test"

[Dylan Wilbanks]

I'm looking over their procedures in their executive summary, and, well,
kinda specious stuff they're looking at.

E.g.:

"Podcast: A school was determined to have podcasts if there was a link from
the homepage or from the main news."

>From the executive summary:

"Of the top 124 colleges and universities tested, very few passed.

"17 schools passed the W3C test for valid HTML/XHTML; the remaining
non-valid homepages averaged 45 errors each.

"32% or 40 schools had an RSS feed on their home page, but only 12% or 15
schools made use of Podcasts on the homepage."

The way it's phrased suggests that RSS and podcasts are requirements for
passing the accessibility test. Last I checked, RSS and podcasts aren't
specifically required by WAI or 508. I mean, according to these rules, the
School of Public Health is more accessible than the UW main site because I
have an RSS feed exposed and a link to our podcasts, not because of, you
know, I have fewer WAI/508 errors than them.

It seems like they're doing their best to edit and design their way out of
people listening to them. Any of you at EDUCAUSE next week can quote me on
that (because I won't be there).

dw

Dylan Wilbanks
Webmaster and Asst to Assoc Deans
Sch of Pub Hlth, U of Washington
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessibleweb-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu 
> [mailto:accessibleweb-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On 
> Behalf Of Dan Comden
> Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 1:31 PM
> To: accessibleweb at u.washington.edu
> Subject: [Accessibleweb] "School web sites fail accessibility test"
> 
> 
> "Only 14 percent of nation's top universities reportedly meet 
> W3C accessibility guidelines"
> 
> http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6639
>