Lisa Amundson's article offers a quick list of suggestions aimed at making websites run by teachers for their classrooms more accessible. By accessible Amundson means for a wide array of potential visitors, from the hearing impaired, to disabled, to blind, or even color blind. Methods to create such a webpage are outlined in a five step process. First, a webpage should be organized with headers and broken down like an outline. In addition, the colors on the page should be easily discernible in gray scale. Second, the page should be navigable without a mouse by pressing tab to roll through headlines and links on the page. Third, images should have text explanations to describe what the images are to someone who cannot see the images either because of a vision impairment or due to problems with the writing of the image. Fourth, page creators should make sure their links are clearly labeled, so that the text of the link that someone clicks on reflects the content that will follow. Fifth and finally, web validators should be used to detect any accessibility problems. As a final check, Amundson suggests going to the newly created page with sound turned off, images turned off, and with a gray scale color scheme selected. If the webpage is still navigable even when the window is resized, then it is probably ready for use by students and parents alike.
Amundson wrote this article to inform teachers of the many things to consider when creating a class webpage. Some of her suggestions came as a surprise to me, like avoiding the colors red and green which are difficult for colorblind people to discern. I found some of her suggestions overly tedious though. Maybe that was the way I saw it because I do not have experience with webpage design. So I might have a hard time figuring out how to implement her suggestions without additional assistance. I mean I would not want to spend hours pouring over a webpage to make an altercation that may not even benefit any of my constituents. I personally would want to first find out which impairments need addressing and then make a page accordingly to avoid wasting time. My feeling might change if she offered an additional article that presented easy ways to implement her five steps or once I had enough experience with webpage creation to quickly figure in these five steps myself.
Great job outlining what this article was about. I would have never thought about not using red or green in my webpage either. This seems like a great article to at least take into account how different people may be affected by viewing a webpage. I agree that some of the steps do seem a little tedious or even self-explanatory. I think you are right in taking your audience into account and then making altercations so as not to spend too much time over the fine details. Even if the article is a bit tedious, it at least gives good insight to details we may never have taken into account for our teacher webpages.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think it is important to create a website that is accessible to everyone, and believe that this article provides specific suggestions that are helpful in accomplishing this task. I do agree with you that some of the suggestions seem tedious and time consuming, but also think that your recommendation of taking your audience into account would simplify some of the things you would have to do to make the website accessible. Your summary of the article is clear and easy to follow, and your input about the article is honest and helpful as well.
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