Monday, November 12, 2012

Web Accessibility & DCPL


Last year I worked in the San Francisco Unified School District with the disabled population. This included both the mentally and physically disabled population. Mostly all classrooms were equipped with computers with accessibility tools. As we were on the tour I was thinking about the young adult population that I worked with. They used some of the tools described, but mostly I was wondering if the teachers I worked with knew about all these programs.

In one classroom of severely disable students the teacher utilized the San Francisco Public Library’s Library for the Deaf and Blind. They have a room similar to DCPL’s Adaptive services, with a substantial collection of books on tape, brail books, as well as large print books. There were probably about two accessible computers. We never used them, and I’m sure the technology was not as good as D.C’s Public Library.  




With my experiences last year in mind, I was extremely impressed and pleased with the work that DCPL is doing, the Adaptive services Library is an incredible resource for any handicap person, whether physical, mental, temporary, or onset. It’s really pleasing to realize that many websites are accessible too. I realize its time consuming for people to review the websites to make sure they are accessible, but in this case, I prefer this method to having a program check for errors. It is very important that the websites are as accessible and easy to navigate as possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment