Making Museum Web Sites Accessible

Jonathan Bowen, London South Bank University, United Kingdom
http://access.museophile.net/

Workshop: Accessibility

In this half-day workshop you will gain an insight into how to meet the challenge of making your website accessible to a wide range of visitors, and in particular those with disabilities, by becoming aware of the issues involved and learning about freely available onlines resources and tools.

Physical disabled access is something that most museums consider very seriously. Indeed, there are normally legal requirements to do so. However, on-line disabled access is still a relatively novel field and many museums have still not yet considered the issues in depth. The Human-Computer Interfaces for their websites are normally tested with major browsers, but not with specialist browsers or against the relevant web standards.

This workshop will consider the current state of the art in this area, survey some current museum websites for accessibility, including the use of screen-readers with these sites, and gives suggestions for possible improvements. It is especially suitable for those about to embark on updating their website with accessibility in mind.