I n the past few years, the World Wide Web has become one of the most popular mediums for presenting and gathering information. As more and more people access the Internet, web pages strive to be not only informative, but attractive as well. Web designers continually seek out new technology and interesting layouts in an effort to improve upon their pages and to attract viewers. However, by doing so, they may be excluding disabled patrons.
Web pages create an interesting challenge for the disabled, especially for the visually impaired.
Many have difficulty seeing text on a computer screen and use screen readers to announce the text on web pages. Thus, pages with a complicated layout, especially those utilizing frames or columns, pose problems. Also, the visually impaired often cannot see graphics and opt to turn them off on their browser. Furthermore, users with hearing impairments are obviously unable to appreciate audio files and movies. There is a new trend in web design towards making pages accessible to the disabled.