What Does the WAC Do?

Some people with disabilities cannot access much of the World Wide Web. For example, without modification users who are blind often cannot access, navigate, and interpret pages that use a graphical interface; people who are deaf or hard of hearing cannot understand video or auditory material; and computer interfaces, like the mouse, can make maneuvering web pages difficult for people with physical disabilities or repetitive stress injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Fortunately, many of these problems can be overcome when web media is created with accessibility in mind. To help its web authors create such accessible media, The Ohio State University created the Web Accessibility Center, the WAC. The goal of the WAC is to make the Web useable worldwide.

Our Mission

Accessible design and universal web design help to accommodate students with learning and/or physical disabilities so that they can access online course material just like any other student.

The Web Accessibility Center (WAC), housed in the Office for Disability Services, has been established via collaboration between the Office for Disability Services, the College of Education and TELR in order to assist faculty in developing accessible distance education courses, as well as any on-line segments of OSU courses. The WAC was intially funded by a grant from the OSU Partnership Grant and is now funded mostly through renewing funds from the Division of Student Affairs.

Currently the WAC has begun assisting faculty with their on-line distance education courses and web-enabled lecture series. From there we are branching out to provide training in web accessibility as well as technical assistance to all OSU Faculty and TA's for their course related materials on the Web, and staff who host student web portals (registrar, OSU Libraries, etc.). The WAC also plans to research and develop add-ons that will assist faculty in making accessible web sites for their courses using current authoring tools (e.g. FrontPage, Dreamweaver, WebCT, etc.).

WAC’S Role

• Ensure that all distance education and online courses at Ohio State are fully accessible to students with disabilities.
• Aid in web page design, captioning, and validation checking OSU Web pages.
• Advise instructors in developing Web components for their courses.
• Provide training and technical assistance for staff who host student sites (e.g., registrar, library).
• Develop templates and add-ons that will assist instructors and staff in making accessible web sites using authoring tools.