Web Accessibility

The development of the Internet has changed a purely text-based environment with relatively simple presentation features to one driven by graphics and multimedia (including complex scripting). This development has presented many difficulties for those computer users with disabilities ranging from congenital causes, aging, or injury. Web accessibility is related to usability, or the design of Web pages that can be used by as many computer users as possible, and Web accessibility refers to designing a Web page “so that more people can use...[a] web site effectively in more situations” (Thatcher et al., 2002, p. 13). “... The objective is to make the world directly usable by as many people (with and without disabilities) as possible.” (Vanderheiden, 2003).