Why is it Important to Design Accessible Web Pages?

The Internet has become a powerful tool that provides extensive educational, governmental, and commercial information. Developing universally accessible websites makes these resources available to everyone. This website describe challenges that people from four disability groups - people with visual (including color blindness), hearing, and physical impairments may have when visiting your website. We suggest techniques for web designers who want to develop websites that are accessible to a larger population.

Today, many people who use the Internet cannot utilize the full range of available resources. For example, some visitors:

• Cannot see graphics because of visual disabilities.
• Cannot hear audio because of hearing disabilities.
• Cannot use the mouse because of physical disabilities.
• Cannot differentiate online materials because of color blindness.

We encourage web page designers to apply "universal design" principles. The purpose of this website is to provide designers and developers of web based materials tools and techniques for designing materials that will be more accessible to everyone. To learn more about these and other accessibility considerations, review the links and resources section of this site.

*This site was created by students in Design and Development of Educational Software (EDUC 235) from the Educational Technology Leadership Program at George Washington University. Group members are: Anita Crawley, Mandy Tumulty, Kathleen Waid, and Matt Wennersten.