University of Illinois Tools and Techniques for Functional Web Accessibility

Abstract

Functional web accessibility goes beyond complying with the technical requirements of Section 508 or W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Current web accessibility policies and practices favor an “accessible repair” approach to web accessibility, which lead to resources that might meet the technical requirements of accessibility guidelines, but are still not functionally usable by people with disabilities. The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (UIUC) has developed a set of HTML best practices and accessibility management and visualization tools to improve the design and verification of the functional accessibility of web resources. The goal of these practices and tools is to support developers and administrators in creating and verifying the functional accessibility of their web resources. The practices encourage developers to use forward looking web design that improves the accessibility of web resources to everyone, including people with disabilities, by making web resources more adaptable to a wider range of technologies and user preferences.