Consider these facts:
1996 Chartbook on Disability in the United States estimates that "19.4%
of noninstitutionalized civilians in the United States, totaling 48.9 million
people, have a disability. Almost half of these people (an estimated 24.1 million
people) can be considered to have a severe disability."
-- Source www.infouse.com/disabilitydata/p4.textgfx.html
According to Georgia Tech's GVU WWW Survey (April 1998), approximately eight
percent of web users have a disability. Nearly half of those users are blind
or visually impaired. For more details check out the GVU WWW site at: www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/.
An article in WebReview by Joseph Lazzaro entitled, "Making the Internet
accessible for persons of all abilities," (September 4, 1998) states "According
to the United States government statistics, there are about 35 million persons
in the country with physical, sensory, or cognitive disabilities. The World
Health Organization puts the figures for worldwide disability numbers much higher
-- at around 750 million."
--Source www.webreview.com/1998/09_04/index.shtml
An article by the Washington Post on August 24, 2000 discusses what changes
may be ahead since all federal agencies will begin making their Web sites accessible.
(washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13415-2000Aug23.html).
It doesn't matter if you use the numbers from the Chartbook on Disability or
use Mr. Lazzaro's article, the point is that disabled users are an active portion
of our population and Web sites should be designed to enable all audiences/clients
equal use of our information.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Has developed and published accessibility guidlines called the Web Accessibility
Initiative. You can visit their Web site by clicking on the link below.
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/
Land Grant Training Alliance
Free on-line lessons in accessible Web page design can be found by clicking
on the link below.
http://www.lgta.org/accessibility/