Q. How do I make my webpages accessible to persons with low vision or who are blind?

 A. The following links offer guidelines.

1. For a complete story, check out the following link:

Chancellor's Office, California Community Colleges, Distance Education:

Access Guidelines for Students With Disabilities.

Your Assistive Technology Specialist on campus is the expert in this field. Laurie Vasquez is SBCC's Assistive Technology Specialist.

2. An online course offered on a continuous and unmoderated intake basis is available at the following url:

University of Toronto, Designing Accessible Curriculum Course

3. If you want to independently evaluate your webpages for accessibility, go to the following site:

Go to Bobby for a self-check on your webpages to see if they are accessible for people with disabilities.

4. How do I make "alt tags" to describe graphics?

Some teachers making webpages have asked how to put the alt tags in the html of their pages to describe the visuals for a student who is visually impaired or blind. Of course, as you can see from the webpages listed above, there is much more to accessibility than this.

If interested, however, go to the "edit html" button on your page, and after img src ="name of page", insert a space using the space bar, and then type in caps ALT="your description", using no caps in between the quotation marks, and then insert a space after the last quotation mark. (I guess it goes without saying that your description means how you would concisely describe the picture.)

It is a good idea to try testing your page out with a screen reader to see how it works.

To sum up, by taking the time to investigate these resources and build these things into your webpage curriculum design, you know your page will comply to the legal requirements and be accessible to everyone!

Please send your questions and/or answers for either teachers or students to Gerry Lewin for possible posting.