Course Requirements/Evaluation:
You will be constructing an accessible
Web site. This will be your main output of the course.
The Main Web Page = 80 points, total.
Successful construction of a web site meeting
all Section 508 and WAI Priority 1 (Level A) requirements. Your web site must include
the following elements and all elements must function correctly (these may be on different pages but
links to them should be clearly identified):
- meeting all WAI requirements
- a DOCTYPE and language declaration on each page
- style sheets using a linked style sheet, an embedded style, and an in-line style
- a data table with correct markup
- images with meaningful alt-text (or appropriately empty) and at one image with a longdesc
- an appropriate navigation structure, including a skip navigation, and accesskeys
- internal and external links with appropriate titles
- appropriate color contrast between foreground and background objects
- no deprecated tags
- Use the validators identified on this syllabus to check your pages. You should
check your pages with a minimum of three validators:
(a) accessibility (Bobby or equivalent),
(b) HTML, and
(c) style sheet.
- Put their icons (if available) and links on your pages, save a copy of the
report, and link to it from each page
Self-critique = 10 points.
Tell me why your web site is good. What did you do right that makes it a great site?
What were your design influences and why did you lay it out the way you did?
How did you address the Web Accessibility Guidelines? How did you validate your pages.
Link to this critique from your home page.
Here are some evaluation hints.
Participation and attendance = 10 points.
All students must participate in class and attend all the classes,
unless excused.
E-mail me or phone me (614-267-2484) if you can't make a class.
Grading
Grading will be based on the following scale. Minimum required
points for each grade:
Grading Scale
| A |
90 points |
| A- |
85 points |
| B+ |
80 points |
| B |
75 points |
| B- |
70 points |
| C+ |
67 points |
| C |
65 points |
| C- |
63 points |
| D+ |
60 points |
| D |
60 points |
| E |
59 points or less |
Required and recommended Texts:
Required Text and Resources:
Thatcher, J., Burns, M. R., Heilmann, C., Henry, S. L., Kirkpatrick, A., Lauke, P. H., Lawson, B., Regan, B., Rutter, R., Urban, M., & Waddell, C. D. (2006). Web accessibility: Web standards and regulatory compliance. New York: Friends of Ed.
This book is also available as an eBook for about 1/2 the book price.
Meyer, E. A. (2005). CSS References. Retrieved from the Internet on February 20, 2006 from: http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/references/index.html
This site links off to the CSS references for CSS1 and CSS2 from the W3C. I include this site instead of the direct link to the W3C because Meyer explains the frame based CSS2 reference pages. This is free over the Internet (obviously).
Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE). This is more than a validator; it tests the page for functionality as well as WCAG guidelines compliance.
Buy a U3 smart drive,
which will allow you to run Firefox (under $20 for 2 gig at MicroCenter, the last time I checked).
Recommended (or Frequency Needed Resources):
Cederholm, D. (2006). Bulletproof web design. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Great book by one of the best authors on cascading style sheets. "Bulletproof" means he's trying to create sites that work well AND are well designed. Excellent book.
Cederholm, D. (2004). Web standard solutions: The markup and style handbook. New York: Friends of ED.
Cederholm takes a problem, like creating lists, and demonstrates different ways of creating a list -- from the usual (usually worst) way to nifty styling using CSS. Very helpful book. Highly recommended.
Grannell, C. (2005). Web designer's reference. An integrated approach to web design with XHTML and CSS. New York: Friends of ED. ISBN: 1-59059-430-4. I chose this book because it takes each design concept and starts with the XHTML coding, then tells you how to do the task using styles.
Grannell, C. (2006). Foundation Web design with Dreamweaver 8. New York: Friends of ED.
A good book for learning Dreamweaver.
Holzschlag, M. E. (2005). Spring into HTML and CSS. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley.
Holzschlag walks you through XHTML (notwithstanding the title) and CSS in a logical way. A good book. I almost used it for this class.
Krug, S. (2006). Don't make me think: A common sense approach to web usability (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Contains one of the single best chapters on Web accessibility I have ever read. This book is not a "how-to" but more of a humorous look at what makes good design. Don't expect to see any code here.
Nielsen, J., & Tahir, M. (2002). Homepage usability: 50 websites
deconstructed. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders. (ISBN: 073571102X).
The Nielsen & Tahir book is great as a resource.
The first 50 or so pages talk about good web page design practices, and the remainder
of the book is the deconstruction of web pages. Consider buying this book used.
A quick reference guide can be had from the
CC Online Store. There are three fold-out charts that are sold as a group that
include CSS, HTML, and the ASCII special characters. You may also want to get a color chart while
you are there.
Also look for the "Spark Charts" on HTML from Barnes and Noble or on-line at:
https://secure.sparknotes.com/account/buyProduct.psp?pid=40010. This chart doesn't include CSS
but it does list both HTML tags and their attributes, something Visibone also does, but in what some
might think is a slightly more confusing manner.
Resources
Other Accessibility Specific Books and Sources:
Adobe Systems (2003).
How to Create
Accessible Adobe PDF Files Booklet.
Accessibility Color Wheel. Great way to see how foreground (font color) and background colors will look together, plus, instantly shows how the combinations look to people with color blindness.
WebXACT
by Watchfire. Formerly called "Bobby," probably the most famous tool
for checking Web pages.
Colorblind Web Page Filter. This page will convert a web site
to how it is seen by persons with different types of colorblindness.
http://colorfilter.wickline.org/
Juicystudio.com Inaccessbile Content. This page demonstrates why validators like WebXACT cannot be the last word. The page validates correctly but is not accessible or correctly laid out. Note, for example, that the page title is wrong.
Mueller, J. P. (2003). Accessibility for everyone: Understanding
the Section 508 accessibility requirements. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Paciello, M. G. (2000). Web accessibility for people with disabilities. Lawrence, KS: CMP Books.
Slatin, J. M., & Rush, S. (2003). Maximum accessibility: Making
your web site usable for everyone. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
Sutton, Jennifer (2002).
A Guide to Making Documents
Accessible to People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired. American Council
of the Blind.
Web Accessibility Initiative:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools: Overview from the WAI. This is an excellent source not only for evaluation tools, but tools of every description. The Accessibility Color Wheel (see above) came from this site, for example.
Style sheets
Briggs, O., Champeon, S., Costello, E., & Patterson, M. (2002).Cascading style sheets:
Separating content from presentation. Birmingham, UK: Glasshaus.
glish.com: CSS layout techniques (n.d.) Retrieved from the Internet on February 20, 2006 from http://www.glish.com/css/
Links to many useful CSS pages and code that you can borrow.
Callahan, S. (2002). Cascading style sheets
(CSS) by example. Indianapolis, IN: Que.
Meyer, E. A. (2000). Cascading style sheets:
The definitive guide. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly.
Meyer, E. A. (2003). Eric Meyer on CSS:
Mastering the language of Web design. Boston, MA: New Riders.
Mulder, S. (2003).
Mulder's Stylesheets Tutorial.
W3C CSS Validation
Service.
W3CSchools. CSS Reference. This is
a good source for looking up CSS (there is also a tutorial on CSS):
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp
W3C page on style sheets
Web Design Group (1997).
Cascading style sheets.
Zen Garden. On this site any author can take the basic content and modify it to their design using CSS. It demonstrates what can be done with style sheets in a dramatic way.
Design Resources
Flanders, V., & Peters, D. (2002). Son of web pages that suck. San Francisco: Sybex.
Light hearted and informal but still helpful, this book is the follow-up
to Web Pages That Suck. The purpose is to help you "learn good design by looking
at bad design," and it works. There is an accompanying Web site at:
www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
Fleming, J. (1998). Web navigation: Designing for the user experience. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly.
Nielsen, J. (n.d.) Jakob Nielsen's
site (Usability and Web Design). www.useit.com/
Nielsen is working toward maximum
usability without a lot of flash (as you'll see when you go to his page).
Pearrow, M. (2000). Web site usability handbook. Rockland, MA:
Charles River Media.
Contains one chapter on accessibility.
Siegel, D. (1996). Creating killer web sites: The art of third-generation
web design. Indianapolis, IN: Hayden Books.
This one gets a little technical and is not for the beginner. His idea of a killer
web site may be different than yours or mine, however.
HTML Resources
Color Scheme Generator: Helpful for picking a color scheme for your web page. It can also look up a color for you by hexadecimal number and see how the color looks for persons with color blindness.
Colorfilter from Wickline: This will check your page for how it looks to people who are colorblind.
HTML Character sets from Microsoft.
Textism.com (n.d.). Textism: Word HTML Cleaner. [Computer software.] Available from: http://textism.com/wordcleaner/
This site will strip the "evil" code left from the conversion of Word documents.
The W3C Markup Guide for a brief introduction to the basic structure of an HTML document.
W3CSchools.
XHTML Reference. This is a good source for looking up XHTML.
WAVE Accessibility Validator from WebAIM. Helpful, but you need to print out the symbol key to understand the output. Useful to see how layout tables are read too.
WebMonkey:
HTML basics. This is the first page of a tutorial on HTML.
Williamson, H. (1999). HTML master reference. Foster City, CA:
IDG Books. There a many books on HTML on the market and you may find something better, but this one is pretty good. Fortunately, it's arranged like an encyclopedia with
all the HTML elements in alphabetical order. There is also a CD with examples. Unfortunately, the book is becoming dated and does not include XHTML or CSS2.
Frequently Used Sites
A-Prompt
OSU site licensed software
A list apart Great source for techniques
Bobby by Watchfire. The "standard" validator.
W3C Schools Go here to learn about HTML and CSS
WebAIM
WebMonkey: The Web Developer's Resource
Statement of Student Rights:
"Any student with a documented disability who may require special
accommodations should self-identify to the instructor as early in the quarter as
possible to receive effective and timely accommodations." Together we will work
with the Office for Disability Services
to identify appropriate accommodations.
Description/Rationale:
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) both speak to the need for telecommunications media to be
accessible to persons with disabilities. Moreover, The Ohio State University has
committed itself to accessibility through the founding and support of the Web Accessibility Center.
Web content that is accessible to persons with disabilities
complies not only with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act but is also more usable
by all persons, especially those using alternative media (e.g., PDAs). All Web content
developers must be able to construct accessible Web content in this new regulatory
and technological environment.
Relationship to other courses:
This course is unique within the university, however, it is
somewhat related to Edu. PAES 716, New and Emerging Assistive Technology for Persons
with Disabilities, in that both address using technology to assist persons with
disabilities; however, 716 focuses on assistive technology related to tasks of work,
leisure, and education, while this course addresses accessibility of Internet content
specifically.
Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions (Objectives/Student Learning Outcomes):
Persons wishing to use the Web to communicate with the broadest
possible audience will only be able to achieve this goal by creating accessible
content. This course is a basic, beginning course in Web page design. Although some
knowledge of HTML is helpful, no knowledge of HTML is assumed and lack of knowledge should not deter any student from taking the course.
At the end of this course, students will be able to create Web
pages that adhere to the Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act standards for accessible
Web content. Accessible pages will incorporate alternative visual media, style sheets,
and logical structure. Students will also be able to evaluate the pages of other
Web page authors for accessibility and design problems, as these problems relate
to accessibility by persons with disabilities. These objectives will be achieved
through in-class exercises demonstrating Web design principles that increase accessibility.
Students will apply these principles by creating an accessible Web site.
Off-campus Field Experience:
None.
Diversity:
The eventual audience for the outcomes of this course (i.e.,
accessible Web pages) is persons with disabilities. Thus, increasing access to information
by the most diverse audience possible is the reason for the course. The design and
construction of accessible Web pages makes Internet content accessible to all.
Technology:
This course is about technology and uses technology to accomplish
its goals. Consequently, technology is the main focus and the main method used to
accomplish the course objectives. In addition, student Web pages will be posted
to WebCT, which has server space for student online projects
