School of Law web developers strive to improve accessibility for people with disabilities
The University of New Mexico Law Library website is one of only four law library sites in the nation out of 180 tested that pass coding standards, Steven Perkins reported in a presentation at the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) conference on June 10. Though Perkins’ presentation focused on law libraries, the entire UNM School of Law website meets W3C standards.
UNM School of Law Assistant Dean for Information Technology Cyndi Dean and Web Programmer Gabe Chavez followed Perkins with a presentation on their efforts to develop the School of Law website and tips on making websites more accessible. Chavez, a senior at UNM majoring in computer science, and Dean are part of a team led by School of Law Web Designer Janet Roupas, which has been revising the website over the past year and a half to improve accessibility, simplify navigation and maintain an attractive website.
“More and more, we’re pointing students to the web as the source of information,” Dean said. Increased use of the web to supplement traditional instruction heightens the need for accessibility.
Roupas notes that the School of Law site will be useful to others in the field. “Web designers should be able to view our source code and extrapolate coding methods,” she said.
In addition to the educational benefits of web accessibility, universities may lose funding if they fail to comply with state and federal laws, such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1986 section 508 regulating government agencies.
Perkins, the coordinator of reference services for the University of Houston libraries, reviewed 180 law library websites for compliance on three levels. The criteria measure general accessibility and accessibility for people with disabilities.
The first two levels identify whether the websites meet coding standards for HTML or XHTML and CSS. Websites that fail to meet these standards may not be accessible on all browsers. “Most large university websites and library websites do not comply,” Perkins said.
If these basic standards are met, the websites are evaluated on a third set of issues affecting accessibility. For example, navigation lists can bog down access on text browsers, which make the web accessible to blind users, forcing the user to listen to lengthy lists of links before reaching the page content. Programming a “skip navigation” function enables the user to access content before navigation. Other factors on the checklist include the number of errors on the page and whether a text-only version is available.
Chavez said that the UNM School of Law website has “met and exceeded level one and two” and is about halfway through the level three checklist. A number of people and organizations assisted in making the website more accessible, including the Alamogordo School for the Blind, UNM Accessibility Services, UNM law students, the National Federation of the Blind and the N.M. Commission for the Blind.
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CALI is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit consortium of law schools that researches and develops computer-mediated legal instruction and supports institutions and individuals using technology in legal education. The accessible website presentation can be viewed at: mms://broadcast.cali.org/conf05/conf05frc401030.wmv.
Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-5813