By Sharon Marek, Web Developer, UNT Central Web Support

Worried about ADA compliance on your Website?

The new Web Publishing Policy and Web Publishing Guidelines reference reflect a state-wide emphasis on accessibility.* Making sure that your UNT Website is available to everyone is important - but may seem like a daunting task.

Here are some resources that can help:

• Bobby: http://www.cast.org/bobby/

This site allows you to enter the URL (the 'Web address') of your UNT Website, and returns a comprehensive list of what will cause accessibility problems. To be 'Bobby Approved', a site must:

• provide text equivalents for all non-text elements (i.e., images, animations, audio, video) 
• provide summaries of graphs and charts 
• ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color 
• clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's text and any text equivalents (e.g., captions) of non-text content organize content logically and clearly
• provide alternative content for features (e.g., applets or plug-ins) that may not be supported 

• Lynx-me: http://ugWeb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/lynx-me.cgi? 

This site will give you an approximation of what your page will look like using Lynx, a text-only Web browser. 

• AnyBrowser.com: http://anybrowser.com/siteviewer.htm

While not strictly an accessibility tool, this site does a very good job of demonstrating what a Website will look like in older browsers (choose HTML 2 + tables, for example) or even in WebTV.

The Adaptive Lab (Chilton Hall, rm 116) has machines with text-to-speech reading software used by students at UNT. For the full experience, try 'listening' to your Website! You may want to call x4750 to be sure that you're dropping in at a convenient time.

*For further information about these new guidelines, see "Is Your Site ADA Compliant?" in the April issue of Benchmarks Online.