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CIC IT Accessibility and Usability Conference

Best Practices Presentation

The presentation will review a best practices approach to web accessibility used by the University of Illinois to implement the web accessibility requirements for the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) for campus web resources. IITAA web requirements is a hybrid of the Section 508 and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) requirements designed to help state web masters improve the functional accessibility of their web resources. The Illinois Functional Accessibility Evaluator and Firefox Accessibility Extension are free tools to help web developers evaluate their web resources for use of the best practices. These tools have been recently updated based changes to the iCITA HTML Best Practices.

Best Practices Approach at the University of Illinois

Major Resources

University of Illinois Update

The University of Illinois currently has 7.5 FTE working on web and IT accessibility related resources through leadership of the Provost Sponsored Information Technology Accessibility Initiative. The initiative resources combined with Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES) works to develop best practices, training, evaluation, collaborations and tools to support web accessibility goals of the university to implement the requirements of the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA) to meet the Section 504 requirements of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

University of Illinois Accessibility Update Presentation

Major Activities and Resources

Presenter Information

Picture of Jon GundersonDr. Gunderson is the Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology Accessibility in the Division of Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES) at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Industrial Engineering with an emphasis in Human Factors.  He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from UW-Madison in Electrical and Computer engineering.  He is currently responsible for computer and information technology accessibility issues for students, faculty and staff with disabilities at UIUC.  Before his present position at UIUC, he was a visiting assistant professor in an Rehabilitation Services Administration sponsored rehabilitation engineering training program at DRES. As a graduate student he worked at the Trace Research and Development Center. While at the Trace Center he worked on a number of R&D projects and the evaluation of a number of technologies for people with motor impairments and visual impairments.  His continued research interests focus on how to improve the design information technologies for people with disabilities to achieve maximum performance and greater independence in their use of computer based technologies. He is working on number of projects related to the web and information technology accessibility that are part of the Illinois Center on Information Technology Accessibility (iCITA). He is the past chair of the W3C User Agent Working Group and currently involved in making dynamic HTML more accessible as part of the W3C Protocols and Formats Working Group work on the Accessible Rich Internet Applications. He has given numerous presentations, workshops and courses related to web accessibility. He leads the development of the Firefox Accessibility Extension and the Illinois Functional Web Accessibility Evaluator Tool. These tools help verify the use of the iCITA HTML Accessibility Best Practices techniques to implement the requirements of the Section 508 and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. He led the development of the Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office to help authors create accessible HTML version of Microsoft Office documents and is now a commercial project from Virtual 508. . He also developed the PC Talking Typing Tutor a software program for Microsoft Windows to teach people with visual impairments and blindness how to touch type.

Presentation