Getting Started for Webmasters

This is for Webmasters, people with some HTML knowledge, or people interested in publishing documents to the web. Please read over the Introduction to Web Accessibility if you have not already.

Guidelines

The first step is to determine which of the two most commonly used sets of guidelines you need or would like to follow. If your web site is associated with an organization that receives federal funding, then you most likely need to meet the Section 508 Federal Guidelines. In this case, you will need to review thoroughly these federally mandated rules. After you have looked at the regulations themselves, you might want to go through the online tutorial written by Jim Thatcher. This online course is extremely detailed and offers many good examples using HTML code. For this reason, it is a resource well worth bookmarking for future reference. In addition to Jim Thatcher's tutorial, the Section 508 tutorial from the Access Board also offers an informative overview of what steps to take to meet the letter of the Section 508 law. In fact, this tutorial should help reinforce what you have learned thus far. Since the entire tutorial is completely displayed on one page, it also serves as a handy reference work when you need to find concrete examples of HTML syntax.

If you have determined that you would like to adhere to the more stringent WAI Guidelines, you will need to review these rules first. After you have looked at the rules themselves, you will next probably wish to go to view our page on the WAI Guidelines. Then go through the WAI guidelines tutorial to learn how to bring your site into compliance.

After you've become experienced with the guidelines that you interested in, it might be worthwhile to take a look at the other set to see what the differences are.

PDF Files

PDF files on the web can pose accessibility problems if they are not created correctly. Check out our tutorial on PDF files to see how to make sure that they are accessible.

Power Point Files

Power Point presentations on the web can pose accessibility problems if they are not created correctly. Check out our tutorial on Power Point files to see how to make sure that they are accessible.

Webmaster tools

We have a list of useful Webmaster tools that you can go and download.

Learning More

You can go through some more tutorials on Tutorials Page. Check out our Accessibility Resources Page for more links.