Accessible ITems
New Public Schools Accessible IT Kit Available
Access to information technology in schools is increasingly important for student success. However, many students with disabilities do not have access to the information technology that other students are using. The New England ADA and Accessible IT Center (funded by the US Department of Education) has available, an information kit - Breaking Down Barriers: K-12 and Beyond that demonstrates how to make IT accessible to students with disabilities.
This free kit includes:
- a CD-Rom demonstrating the benefits of accessible IT for students with disabilities
- a checklist to help school personnel survey their school's technology for accessibility
- a printed information booklet for parents
- a poster depicting examples of accessible information technology
Schools, parents, and others interested in information on making technology in schools accessible can order a kit by calling 800-949-4232 (v/TTY).
Web Accessibility and Cognitive Disabilities
It is an unfortunate fact that the Web accessibility community has struggled for some time to come to a consensus on guidelines that can be applied to Web content for individuals with cognitive disabilities. Many authors propose specific, commonsense, considerations while others wait for more definitive research. WebAIM believes that promoting a dialogue on this important issue will be helpful in two ways. First, the collective thoughts of a number of individuals can be gathered and distilled. This may aid researchers in forming their questions as well as the ways in which they approach answering them. It may also aid Web developers who want to design their content now in a way that does not exclude the largest population of individuals with disabilities. Second, ongoing interaction on the topic holds the promise to further refine important areas and subtle distinctions between issues that will be important. WebAIM currently has a two part article on their web site speaking to this issue. The first article is entitled Cognitive Disabilities Part 1: We Still Know Too Little, and We Do Even Less 
(http://webaim.org/techniques/articles/cognitive_too_little/). Part two of the article is entitled Cognitive Disabilities Part 2: Conceptualizing Design Considerations (http://webaim.org/techniques/articles/conceptualize/).
Source: WebAIM - Articles: Techniques & Concepts (http://webaim.org/techniques/articles/).
