Accessible Design Resources

WAC Guides and How To's

Accessible Design: Best Practices: Overwhelmed by the standards? Not sure which standards you should be following? This comprehensive guide brings together the best design practices from usability, Section 508, and W.C.A.G. standards and explains them in clear English with code examples. Each section is clearly referenced, so you know which standard comes from which source.

Accessible Design for Distance Learning: Considerations for designers of distance learning courses. How will students use your site? Details the major access and usability issues.

Accessible Web Design: Why and How. Not sure what web accessibility is all about? This guide gives you an overview of the history of legislation, the current standards, and how you can begin to test your site for accessible design.

Links: Testing ALT tags, titles, and link text combinations. Ever wonder if you should include a link title or how about an image title instead of an ALT tag. We've created a host of different image-link scenarios and tested the various configurations with our screen reader and browsers.

Understanding and Applying Section 508 Standards. Section 508 standards represent the current legal benchmark when assessing accessibility compliance. This detailed guide walks you through the standards with simple explanations and real-world examples.

Designing Accessible Web Pages: an intermediate tutorial by Joe Wheaton, Sean O'Briant and George Abraham. Ready to go beyond the standards to incorporate advanced issues of usable design? Follow this tutorial to get a better sense of the do's and don't's of accessible design. [Note: this is an older tutorial. Most information is still relevant, but you may also refer to the more recent techniques described in the "Best Practices" tutorial above.]

Other Resources

Dive Into Accessibility: 30 days to a more accessible web site: Complete book is available online. Abstract -- This book answers two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my web site more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second.

Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center (ITTATC) Web Accessibility Course.
A free (registration required), Web-based course for HTML knowledgeable web developers; teaches the techniques for creating accessible web sites.

Online course in accessible web design.

The University's ADA Coordinator's Office and the College of Humanities' Humanities information Systems Office have teamed up to provide a university wide access to a five week course in accessible web design. The course, WebAim Accessibility Training, can be found online and is available free to OSU faculty, staff and students (OSU login required).