Re: WWW, Mosiac, and Access for People with Disabilities

Gregg Vanderheiden (gcvander@facstaff.wisc.edu)
Thu, 6 Oct 1994 22:43:42 +0100

A few notes for those interested in disability access and the WWW:

1) There are two presentations at the Mosaic conference in Chicago on access
by persons with disabilities. One will be by Paul Fontaine, and will be
part of the HCI session on Tuesday. I will also be doing a presentation, on
Wednesday in the 2:15-3:45 slot, on emerging interfaces.

2) The Trace Center has also just received two major grants in conjunction
with the World Institute on Disability and the National Center on Accessible
Media, and is working in conjunction with a number of disability
organizations (ACB, AFB, NFB, UCPA, ...) to work on the development of
cross-disability interface strategies and design guidelines for
next-generation information systems.

3) In addition, we are working on a number of WWW/Mosaic-specific projects,
including:

- a seamless cross-disability accessible interface strategy;

- a cgi titled AltPage which a user could invoke which would automatically
filter an HTML page and change it from a graphic to a text based page
(including translating ISMAPs. (This AltPage program should also find
utility for people who have low bandwidth systems or would generally like
faster access.)

- a set of design guidelines and options for HTML pages to maximize their
accessibility while preserving artistic expression.

If you are interested in more information on these and related topics, write to

curbcuts@trace.wisc.edu

or check our gopher / ftp server at

trace.wisc.edu

later this month (or WWW next month). We have also set up a listserve on
access to the NII.

Gregg

Gregg C. Vanderheiden, Ph.D.
Internet gcvander@facstaff.wisc.edu
608/262-6966 fax 608/262-8848