Accessibility in web design - overview

Delivery of education online, in place of or as a supplement to traditional delivery methods, has become imperative for many institutions. Accessibility of online media is a major issue in ensuring equity, effectiveness and efficiency of web delivery, and this raises issues in several areas: economic, technological, cultural as well as physical or learning disability.

This website is a resource for educators and web designers to become familiar with accessibility issues in online education in general, and website production in particular. It also provides technical advice for website production, and links to resources for further exploration.

Macromedia Dreamweaver and WebCT are the principal formats used for educational website production at UNSW, and this site particularly explores the use of these tools, but the principles discussed have wide application to website production in general, regardless of specific software.

The site may be worked through as a tutorial on accessibility. Simply work through the menu items in a linear fashion. A UNSW discussion forum is available for queries relating to the material, or for general discussion about web accesssibility (sorry, UNSW community only). Some external forums are also listed.

Or, if you are looking for information on a particular topic, please go to the section map.

Links are provided to many other resources available on the web - a full list of resources can be found in the Links & tools section of this site.

A printable version of this site is available here.

Additional information developed at UNSW is available in the document Guidelines for Accessible Online Courses (link from EDTeC website)