Responses to Section G. Other Issues (Question 19)

G. Other Issues

Question 19. The Department is interested in gathering other information or data relating to the Department's objective to provide requirements for Web accessibility under titles II and III of the ADA.

Are there additional issues or information not addressed by the Department's questions that are important for the Department to consider? Please provide as much detail as possible in your response.

An important step would be to support the development of a certification process so that qualified individuals and organizations could make an assessment of the accessibility of a web based resource based on current standards of practice of web accessibility for meeting ADA or WCAG 2.0 requirements for the technologies that are used to create web based resources and the technologies used to render web resources to people with disabilities. This would essentially create the equivalent of certification of web accessibility, similar to a certification of a building or transportation service meeting current ADA building standards. This would help unify the meaning of what web accessibility means in practice and start to develop a society of professional practitioners who could advance the practice, education and research in the area of web accessibility. Certification and professional practice is an important resource if higher education is ever going to include IT accessibility in its curriculum for pre-service training of IT professionals and computer scientists. This is similar to how accessibility has been included into the education of architects, civil and construction engineering programs..