Since passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), schools are required to educate students with disabilities in the "least restrictive environment" (Hopkins 2005), i.e., to the maximum extent possible with their non-disabled peers (Myhill 2004). School libraries are required to…

An increasing number of library patrons are hard of hearing. The U.S. Bureau of Census projected that 35 million North Americans would suffer from hearing loss by the year 2005 based on the age-population projections. These individuals would have at one time been labeled as deaf due to the lack of assistive hearing technology such as hearing aids…

Examined the accessibility of two Web-based abstracting and indexing services by blind users using screen-reading programs based on guidelines from the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by the WWW Consortium. Suggests Web developers need to conduct usability testing and librarians need to be aware of accessibility…

In 2002, the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that 99% of public schools had Internet access and 86% of those schools had a web site or web page (Kleiner & Lewis, 2003). This study examined accessibility issues on elementary school homepages. Using a random sample of elementary school web sites, the researchers documented…

Explains federal standards that libraries can use to make Web sites accessible to users with disabilities. Describes Section 508 standards from the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; types of disabilities to consider, including vision, hearing, mobility, cognitive impairments, and seizure disorders; graphics; and conflicting interpretations of the law.…