[Accessibleweb] UW accessibility ranking

[Richard B. Ells]

There is a middle way that would cover a lot of miles: Pool our CMS skills to come up with truly access optimized designs that we can share. 

CMSs at the UW already contain hundreds of thousands of pages. A CMS inherently has centralized templates, stylesheets, scripting, and modules, providing an opportunity to really carefully select and design all four to address a wide range of goals including accessibility.


   -----------------------------------
     Rick Ells
     Senior Webmaster
     UW Information Technology
     206.543.2875
     rells at uw.edu
     http://staff.washington.edu/rells



-----Original Message-----
From: accessibleweb-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:accessibleweb-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Dylan Wilbanks
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:30 AM
To: Terrill Thompson
Cc: accessibleweb at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Accessibleweb] UW accessibility ranking

I spent a lot of time talking to Glenda Sims at HighEdWeb and we
talked about her situation -- the Accessibility Institute was
shuttered, and she's doing all she can to keep Texas' ranking in the
FAE from totally collapsing. They fell out of the top 10, but are
still #18.

We've had this discussion online and offline for years about
accessibility at UW. We have two ways we could raise our ranking:

1. We could get the university to require accessibility and put
money/FTE behind enforcing it, along with having a web developer or
two available to help departments make things accessible. But now
you're fighting for $100K in a time where the state budget is going
down by tens of millions every state budget projection.

2. We could continue on the education path and try to evangelize as
much as possible. It's worked to a point, but you run into the same
problems over and over again -- lack of knowledge, and lack of
resources to get that knowledge into the heads of developers/designers
on campus.

I wonder if there is a third way. Maybe there's some way we could
improve education while pushing a11y/universal design as a
requirement. But I'm not sure what it looks like.

What we really need is to identify senior leadership who see a11y as
important and are willing to champion it in the corridors of power.
Who in Gerberding cares about accessibility? I mean, besides Gina. :)

dw

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Terrill Thompson <tft at u.washington.edu> wrote:

> Hi All,

>

> I'm here at EDUCAUSE where Jon Gunderson of the University of Illinois is unveiling his annual rankings of colleges and universities, overall and by conference, on web accessibility, as determined via an automated analysis using the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE).

>

> The UW didn't do so well. We're ranked 113th out of 183 schools:

> http://webaccessibility.cita.illinois.edu/data/schools/

>

> And in the Pac 10, well, let's just hope we do better at football:

> http://webaccessibility.cita.illinois.edu/data/conference/20/

>

> Keep in mind that FAE is an automated tool, so it doesn't take into account issues that can only be evaluated manually, and it has no way of prioritizing its various measures, so issues that really aren't a big deal in context end up getting the same weight as issues that present major barriers. These same problems though are true for all schools, so it's hard to argue that they affected our ranking.

>

> Regardless of whether we have full confidence in the methodology, I think the takeaway is that we may have some problems with our web accessibility. People on this list have demonstrated an interest in and commitment to accessibility, but that alone may not have resulted in a university website that is accessible to all students. The question is: What more is needed? How can we improve accessibility of *all* UW web pages?

>

> Terry

>

> Terrill Thompson

> Technology Accessibility Specialist

> DO-IT, UW Accessible Technology

> UW Information Technology

> University of Washington

> tft at uw.edu | 206/221-4168

>

> _______________________________________________

> Accessibleweb mailing list

> Accessibleweb at u.washington.edu

> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/accessibleweb

>




-- 

Dylan Wilbanks
Web Producer
School of Public Health
University of Washington
F-350 Health Sciences Bldg
1959 NE Pacific St
Box 357230
Seattle, WA 98195-7230
V: 206.221.6395
F: 206.543.3813
E: wilbanks at uw.edu
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