Research on Web Accessibility in Higher Education‪.‬

RESEARCH ON WEB ACCESSIBILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Information technology, particularly the World Wide Web, is playing an increasingly integral role in higher education for delivery of academic, administrative, and student services. Many of these services are delivered in a way that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. The inaccessibility of campus web pages is especially significant because of the increasing importance of web resources for college studies and the increasing numbers of people with disabilities who are attending postsecondary institutions (Henderson, 2001). In addition, federal legislation requires that an institution's programs and services be accessible to qualified individuals. Specifically, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 mandates that such access is assured within institutions that receive federal funds. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 reinforces and extends Section 504 to public programs and services, regardless of whether or not these programs and services are federally funded. According to these laws, no otherwise qualified individuals with disabilities shall, solely by reason of their disabilities, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination in these programs and services, unless it would pose an undue burden to do so. Although Section 504 and the ADA do not specifically address access to technology-based educational offerings and resources, the United States Department of Justice (Patrick, 1996) clarified that the ADA accessibility requirements apply to programs offered on the Internet.