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Opening Eyes to Web Accessibility
By Barbaree Ash Duke
English Teacher, GIS Instructor and Webmaster
LeRoy Martin GT Magnet Middle School, Raleigh, NC
Imagine
Web Page Design in the last period of the day with all 8th
graders…half of the 25 students were “interested”
and the other half were “present.” Selling students
on how to make web pages is easy. Teaching them how to do
it responsibly is a different notion. Most of my students
were dazzled by moving graphics, games, snappy colors and
hot links to all their favorite music artists. Without any
impaired students in my 9-week class, they needed a reality
check after understanding the basics.
As the webmaster
for my school’s website and a part-time technology
teacher in Web Design and GIS, Geographic Information Systems,
I seek to share the wealth of my knowledge and resources
with my students. I brought in a friend and colleague at
NC State University, to inform my students about web accessibility.
She opened their eyes to “impaired” views of
web pages. They were impressed with the screen readers and
other tools that make the Internet friendly to the disabled.
Students began to realize that our efforts could benefit
the hearing-impaired and severely disabled students that
are in our school.
After mastering
the basics of html coding, my students practiced their new
coding knowledge by assisting teachers that did not have
time to create a web page. Students put in the required
codes to make their pages fun for the unhindered surfer
as well as accessible for the impaired. Web accessibility
was a long overdue lesson in diversity and fairness for
my students. Making our students socially aware is an indispensable
gift.
Barbaree
Ash Duke
bduke@wcpss.net
http://martinms.wcpss.net/dukes_english.htm
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