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"WA: Web Design" Case

Case Description

Dr. Jones teaches geology. He has been at State University for six years. Dr. Jones maintains a fairly robust website with lots of links to external resources and pictures of specimens. Dr. Jones is "tech-savvy" and has databased all of his specimen pictures such that his library is searchable. His pages are generated on the fly when a specimen search is initiated.

Here is a link to one of his mineral pages:

http://webmineral.com/data/Forsterite.shtml

Dr. Jones' university recently authored an institutional web accessibility policy that specifies that Section 508 accessibility standards should be followed. The coordinator of the university's web accessibility project has emailed Dr. Jones and said that his online specimen library is inaccessible because it does not include ALT tags or LONGDESC tags on specimen pictures. The coordinator refers Dr. Jones to Bobby, an online web accessibility checker for more information.

When Dr. Jones enters one of his pages in Bobby, he gets errors that reference the following descriptions:

ALT tags: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/
LONGDESC tags: Long-descriptions:http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/

After reading the descriptions, Dr. Jones thinks that adding ALT tags and LONGDESC tags to his page will be difficult. He infers from the accessibility report that the easiest solution is to remove the graphic library from his website, and believes this will result in "dumbing down" his website. He contacts his university's instructional technology services office to get help. He also contacts you as his administrator for guidance.

As an administrator, which statement most appropriately summarizes the best response?

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Case Responses

Select the button next to the best response. Then, click the "Answer" button to see the results.

Response 1.
Dr. Jones should disable his database mineral application because students with disabilities can't access it.
Response 2.
Dr. Jones' website shouldn't have to implement ALT and LONGDESC tag requirements because making the content accessible would create an undue burden, and because no request has been made by a student with a disability.
Response 3.
Conferring with the instructional technology personnel, Dr. Jones should keep his existing database application in place and implement the changes recommended before a request is made.