Contact: Chris Carrico George Olsen Urge Public Relations 2-Lane Media chris@urgepr.com golsen@2lm.com 213-848-8743 310-473-3706 x2225 WEB STANDARDS WILL HELP WEB ACCESSIBILTY Full support for Web standards would enable developers to make even fuller use of guidelines intended to make the Web more accessible to people with disabilities, according to the Web Standards Project. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, will help Web developers build sites that can be more easily access, whether by people with disabilities or by anyone who might be visiting the site under some constraint, for example a slow Internet connection. "People will find many of the guidelines are things they may be doing already, or can do just by planning ahead," said George Olsen, WSP Project Leader. "For example, most developers are already using tags to describe graphics." Most of the guidelines can be used by Web developers with minimal extra effort and few, if any, trade-offs. "The guidelines aren't asking us to design to the lowest common denominator, they're merely asking us to provide alternate ways for users to comprehend our content," Olsen said. Using the accessibility features built into Web standards minimizes the need for developers to build alternate versions of their sites, he said. But there are a few aspects of the guidelines that still need full support for Web standards in order to be used fully. For example, the guidelines ask Web developers to avoid using the tag to layout elements of a page -- a workaround that's used by a vast majority of Web sites -- unless the table can make sense when read line-by-line. The Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 (CSS-2) standard, finalized more than a year ago, would enable Web developers to lay out pages much more easily, and still be accessible -- but few browsers today support the layout and positioning features of CSS-2. In writing the guidelines, the Web Accessibility Initiative had to provide "interim" guidelines for several areas, describing workarounds developers can use to make pages more accessible until browsers fully support standards and eliminate the need for stop-gap measures. "As browsers fully support key Web standards, it will become easier to use these guidelines," Olsen. "But in the meantime, developers should incorporate the majority of the guidelines that can be used today." ABOUT THE WEB STANDARDS PROJECT WSP (http://www.webstandards.org) is an international coalition of Web developers advancing the Web industry by bringing attention to browser incompatibilities. The coalition urges all browser manufacturers to support existing standards before incorporating proprietary innovations.