Accessibility of Web Pages for Mid-Sized College and University Libraries

The home pages of college and university libraries in the United States with a student population between five and ten thousand were analyzed for accessibility by people with disabilities. This category included 190 schools and 188 could be analyzed. Of the 188, 79 were found to be accessible. Recommendations for future areas of research are included. ********** Colleges and universities have a demand from their students and are legally required to make their facilities accessible to people with disabilities. The legal requirements are defined in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act. Federal agencies are currently required to comply with the standards defined in the amendment. Institutions receiving federal funds may also be required to comply although this has not yet been tested in court. (1) The numbers of students with disabilities attending colleges and universities define the demand. In 2000, 40.4% of freshman reported having a learning disability, 7.1% reported having an orthopedic disability, and 19.9% reported having a visual disability. (2) Students with visual disabilities probably face the greatest number of barriers to accessing Web pages simply because the medium uses graphical representations to convey information. A survey conducted for the academic year 1995-96 indicated that 6% of beginning students had a disability. Of those reporting a disability 15.2% had a visual disability. (3) These figures, taken from financial aid data, do not represent the total post-secondary student population or the entire demand for accessible Web sites among college students. Another survey, published in July 2000, found that 46.5% of college graduates with some kind of disability have a computer and 30.2% of college graduates with a disability use the Internet. (4) These statistics do not provide us with a complete picture of how many people with visual disabilities are attending college and how many of those are using computers. These statistics may only indicate a fraction of the demand. They indicate that there is a sizable population of people with disabilities who are attending college and require access. Existing Guidelines Institutions have responded to the need for physical access by adding ramps to their structures, setting up assistive technology labs, and instituting programs that provide a variety of services to people with disabilities. Designing Web pages for accessibility is an extension of this process. Accessible Web pages promote equal access to information and opportunities. Developers can make many simple design and code changes to increase the accessibility of Web pages. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed standards that clearly state the design and code changes required to create accessible Web pages. The W3C oversees the development and standardization of rules governing the use of hypertext markup language (HTML) and other coding systems that control format and design of information sent over the Internet. The W3C has laid out clear and concise guidelines in its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) for the design and HTML code changes required to ensure Web page accessibility. (5) While most of these guidelines focus on the needs of people with visual disabilities, they also address the needs of people with hearing, learning, and physical disabilities. Furthermore, a Web site that complies with these guidelines will be browser independent. The WAI has created a list of quick tips, which are condensed from the more detailed guidelines, to identify the main features and changes one can make to have accessible Web pages. (6) The list of quick tips is presented here in appendix A. These quick tips are among many that offer Web page developers assistance in creating accessible Web sites. Appendix B provides a list of various sources of recommendations. However, WAI is the de facto "industry" standard. …