Make Accessibility Standard in Software

Accessibility needs to become a standard offering on Web page authoring tools. Right now, it's so difficult to maintain sites responding to screen readers that hardly anyone does so.

As Darrell Shandrow at Blind Access Journal notes, even the U.S. Senate can't meet the standards. There are great free tools out there like WebXact which can measure whether a site measures up, and the Web Access Initiative offers advice, but we really need software.

There is an immense difference between advice and software. Advice can make each individual aware of what they should try to do as they create a page. Software can make certain the page is created, in an accessible way, regardless of how educated in accessibility the author is.

And that's what we need. Accessibility needs to become a standard in Web authoring tools. It needs to be a standard part of the Typepad and Blogger and WordPress templates. It's the only way this will work.