NSF-Funded Student Design Projects:
Guidelines for Designing an Accessible Website for SMART
(Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation)

Designers: Suhail Hirani, Web Site Design For SMART
Goran Jancevski, Hassan Taleb, Raymond Ryan, and Steven Weber, Web Site Accessibility SMART Web Site Guidelines
Client Coordinator:: Mr. Ronald Ristau, Director of Service Development, SMART
Supervising Professor: Robert Erlandson, Ph.D.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202

INTRODUCTION
SMART (Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation) is a public service organization, established by the State of Michigan, responsible for planning, acquiring, constructing, operating, maintaining, and contracting public transportation services in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties. As a public website, SMART’ must provide an accessible website in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  Furthermore, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that information technology used, developed, and procured by the Federal government and agencies that contract with it must be as accessible to people with disabilities as it is to people without disabilities.

The evolving guidelines for web site accessibility derive from the World Wide Web (W3) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) accessibility guidelines.  For example, web sites must be compatible with assistive technologies, such as text-to-speech readers used by the disabled population.  The ability to access a website by people with disabilities as effectively as people without disabilities is referred to as Web Content Accessibility. An accessible web site allows all users to access it, regardless of their browser, resolution, settings, eyesight, hearing, or motor skills.

The transformation of the Internet from a text-based medium to a robust multi-media environment has created a crisis – a growing digital divide in access for people with disabilities. Previously, people with visual disabilities were able to access the Internet with their screen readers audibly reading aloud the text on a web page. Today, graphical web pages are a barrier if they do not incorporate accessible web design.  It is a paradoxical twist that as web technologies advance and incorporate more multi-media in websites to titillate “mainstream” users, such technologies can deny access to disabled users.
Thus, public website designers should create accessible websites that are in compliance with WAI guidelines thereby reducing the risk of ADA-related legal action against themselves.  Unfortunately, the majority of web designers and their clients are not aware of the specifications of Web Content Accessibility criteria.  Among those who are aware of the guidelines, many have misconceptions about accessible web pages, such as:  they must be written in HTML 2.0; they must cater to the lowest common denominator; they must be dull, text-only, designs.

SMART will be contracting with a consulting firm to design their web site.  The consulting firms thus far contacted are either not aware of the guidelines, unfamiliar with handling the various elements of accessible website design, or believe that they need not comply with WAI guidelines.  The goal of both student research projects is to research the need and criteria for accessible websites, provide examples of accessible and non-accessible web sites, and then provide references to guidelines for SMART’s website, which will be forwarded to the selected web design consulting firm.

Two different student groups researched these issues.  One group consisted of a single student who worked on the project for an entire sixteen-week semester (Suhail Hirani, Web Site Design For SMART) while the second group consisted of a group of four students who worked on the project over a four-week period (Goran Jancevski, Hassan Taleb, Raymond Ryan, and Steven Weber, Web Site Accessibility SMART Web Site Guidelines).  Both projects took place concurrently during the same semester.
 

SUMMARY OF IMPACT
SMART’s staff has reviewed the material provided in the student reports. Of particular benefit was the detailed comparisons of apparently similar web sites, one satisfying CAST’s Bobby Priority 1 (Center for Applied Special Technology – http://www.cast.org) accessibility criteria and the other not satisfying these criteria. The student reports provided URLs to demonstration versions of IBM’s Home Page Reader (http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hpr.htm), and the Lynx text browser (http://lynx.browser.org).  With these readily available packages SMART staff have been able to experience accessibility issues, problems, and solutions greatly enhancing their understanding and appreciation of the WAI guidelines.  The chart below  shows typical Priority 1 Accessibility Errors.

The reference material provided in the student projects has helped SMART staff “educate” the consulting companies they are contacting as to the needs and resources available to design accessible web sites.  See Table 1 for examples of such reference material.  CAST’s Bobby web evaluation system provides them a tool for simple web site evaluation and links to the WAI guidelines for more detailed evaluations if required. Also, with the IBM Home Page Reader and the Lynx browser they will be able to experience the web site and thereby assess its accessibility first hand.
 

Table 1. Examples of web based material on accessible design