Accessibility Standards

One of the primary goals of Access Art is to provide Web visitors with an informative and engaging tour of The Dayton Art Institute’s collection. This naturally implies the inclusion of visual and aural technologies to enhance the presentation of artwork. In contrast, Access Art is also designed to be as accessible as possible to everyone, including people with disabilities using adaptive equipment. Although the idea of accessibility may seem incongruous with a Web site enriched with images and sounds, it is not an impossible combination.

The first step toward achieving this goal is to clearly define the characteristics of an accessible Web site. A great deal of information about the topic is available from books, the Internet and conferences, but the recommendations given do not always concur. Fortunately, a single authoritative source has emerged from the World Wide Web Consortium, the international body that leads the development of the Web. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) within that organization has published a set of fourteen Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to help designers create accessible sites. Developed through a process of extensive research and review by a team of experts, the WAI Guidelines were adopted as the accessibility standard for Access Art.

Because the WAI Guidelines are designed to be universal in scope, they do not specifically address the needs of unique audiences such as museums. As a result, they often require interpretation or simplification in order to be applied. This Accessibility section demonstrates how several key Guidelines were implemented in practical ways within Access Art, thereby creating a type of "accessibility style guide" suitable for other museum Web site designers to follow.