As the internet becomes more pervasive in our lives, web accessibility is becoming increasingly important to people with disabilities.  Education is no exception.  Access to the internet is critical for students with disabilities and who must now use the internet to communicate with educators, choose their courses of study and utilize social media to learn of social events hosted at school.  Yet special education students, because of their disabilities, often have difficulty seeing, reading, interpreting and broadly manipulating information on the internet.

The four major categories of disabilities impacting internet users are:

  • Cognitive (impacting the ability to read and comprehend internet information, to remember information and to otherwise manipulative web pages)
  • Deafness (impacting the ability to hear video clips and share oral information over the internet)
  • Blindness (impacting the ability to read web pages and otherwise see web images)
  • Motor deficits (impacting the ability to type or otherwise navigate web sites)c

Fortunately, laws and industry guidelines exist to drive web accessibility for people with disabilities.  Federal law is increasingly being interpreted to include internet accessibility, including the American with Disabilities Act (ADA).  An increasing number of lawsuits are being filed alleging ADA violations in connection with internet access.  Industry too has created guidelines to promote equal access to the internet.  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have been developed over several decades and are now considered the industry standard, providing web developers with a recognized framework in which to work. 

WCAG recommendations address a whole host of technical issues to improve web access, including:

  • font size
  • auto-populated information
  • device orientation
  • scrolling
  • light / contrast
  • text spacing
  • magnification software
  • voice recognition software
  • and time outs / user inactivity. 

For students with disabilities the guidelines offer hope that they will have access to the same on-line educational opportunities as their non-disabled peers.

Accessibility is not a feature, it is a social trend
—Antonio Santos