NSSDC Submits Web Site Accessibility Plan

By Nate James

On June 19, 2001, NASA CIO issued a policy which required all NASA centers to submit plans to address bringing both new and existing web pages into compliance with the Rules for Web-based intranet and internet information and applications under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of Congress by December 2002. Section 508 requires electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by the Federal government be accessible to persons with disabilities.

To guide the centers in implementing this policy, NASA has divided its web pages into 2 categories: New Pages and Existing Pages. All new web pages must be compliant unless due burden would result. Existing web pages must be prioritized and brought into compliance by December 2002. The priority groups are as follows:

• Priority 1 Top 20 web pages at every Center should be compliant by September 30, 2001. This Top 20 list will be updated every quarter. To date our NSSDC web server has hosted 3 pages in this category and all were found to be compliant.
• Priority 2 Center web pages that NASA employees, contractors, or the public use to enter information to request services or report a situation. Some purely informational pages that are significant to Center organizations.
• Priority 3 All remaining Center web pages (not Priority one or two). These pages are infrequently used and less important. They can be brought into compliance as they are being updated for other reasons, or these can be retired if no longer needed.

Goddard Center management has decided to approach the challenge of bringing existing web pages into compliance by requesting that Goddard web developers use a web-based input form created by the Goddard Webmasters group that assists in creating a plan for bringing a web site (family of web pages) into 508 compliance. The resulting plan would be in a standard format, web-accessible and stored in a central database for GSFC use. These plans may be accessed later by the submitter and updated as needed.

In April, NSSDC submitted its 508 compliance plan addressing 31 publicly accessible web sites. Sixteen sites were already compliant, including NSSDC's Photogallery site which ranks #7 in most accessed GSFC sites.

However, some of our larger sites have thousands of web pages, many of which contain graphical elements which need additional text descriptors called ALT tags in order to comply with Section 508. Without these tags, persons using assistive technologies to browse the web, would not be able to recognize the graphical elements and determine its purpose on the web page. With the enlisted help of a couple of enthusiastic summer interns, the remaining 15 outstanding sites are scheduled to be brought into compliance by September 2002.