CUDE

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that public programs and services, including educational institutions and opportunities, be accessible to people with disabilities. For example, with captions, the content of a videotape shown in a course might be made accessible to a person who is deaf. If the product is not captioned, access to the content would need to be provided in another way, perhaps with a sign language interpreter.

People with disabilities continue to face challenges in accessing the full range of opportunities available to people without disabilities. Specifically, barriers to standard computer software limit opportunities in education and employment for some people with disabilities. For example, a part of a multimedia tutorial that uses voice narration without captioning or transcription is inaccessible to students who are deaf. Similarly, an educational tutorial program that requires the use of a mouse is inaccessible to a student who cannot use this device.

Congress has responded to the need to increase access to products and services for people with disabilities by passing legislation in a range of areas, including education, employment, transportation, assistive technology, and electronic and information technology. Some pieces of legislation guarantee the civil rights of individuals with disabilities, others establish procurement requirements for specific agencies, and still others impose accessibility requirements on producers of products and providers of services. Some legislation is at the federal level, and some is at the state level.

According to the ADA Tool Kit, "a physical impairment is a physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement or anatomical loss impacting one or more body systems. Examples of body systems include neurological, musculoskeletal (the system of muscles and bones), respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, lymphatic and endocrine." It goes on to say a "mental impairment is a mental or psychological disorder. Examples include intellectual disability, emotional or mental illness, and organic brain syndrome."

Although each situation is different and the student is the best source of information regarding useful accommodations, the following accommodations are typical for a student who is deaf or hard of hearing:

The World Wide Web has rapidly become the dominant Internet tool, combining hypertext and multimedia to provide a network of educational, governmental, and commercial resources. Much of its power comes from the fact that it presents information in a variety of formats and also organizes that information through hypertext links. Because of the multimedia nature of the web, combined with the poor design of some websites, many Internet surfers cannot access the full range of resources this revolutionary tool provides. Some visitors experience the following:

Sign language is manual communication commonly used by people who are deaf. Sign language is not universal; people who are deaf from different countries speak different sign languages. The gestures or symbols in sign language are organized in a linguistic way. Each individual gesture is called a sign. Each sign has three distinct parts: the handshape, the position of the hands, and the movement of the hands. American Sign Language (ASL) is the most commonly used sign language in the United States.

Although each situation is different and the student is the best source of information regarding useful accommodations, the following accommodations are typical for a student with a learning disability:

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) include open and closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, including cognition; language; memory; attention; reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem solving; sensory, perceptual, and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. The term does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital, degenerative, or induced by birth trauma.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that U.S. programs and services be accessible to individuals with disabilities. The ADA accessibility requirements apply to Internet resources.

For more information about designing web pages, consult the University of Washington's Designing Accessible Websites webpage.