[Accessibility_sig] specialized sites

[Charlene Zvolanek]

Hi All;

I just took a position at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, and my first order of business is to get the various content providers to build accessible materials. 

I have a small avalanche of sites and content that were developed outside the 508 and TAC 206.50 guidelines. I am fielding questions from various directions about the whys and the hows and the whether we have tos.
One question I got today that I want the group to help me out on is in relation to distance learning for library employees throughout the State. I am pretty sure I know the answers to the following questions, but am looking for backup.

New training materials have been developed by our distance learning division for library employees throughout the state, and includes "non-essential" videos providing elaboration on the training topics. 

The questions posed to me were:

	1. I know these laws apply to our main public Website and to public information that we disseminate but do they fully apply to online courses that live in a separate environment (in this case, on our online training site at onlinetraining.tsl.state.tx.us) and that are not intended for the general public but for a specific audience of Texas library staff? I am familiar with Section 508 and the new TAC accessibility laws but I thought they really applied to our public Website and have been fuzzy on whether they apply to our online courses.....

	2. The videos are not captioned at this time but are also not ESSENTIAL to the content of the online course in question. They are optional videos with audio. As such, would it suffice to provide a text-based summary of the videos within the course itself? 


My understanding is that all content available to the public must meet all 508 and TAC 206 requirements. The fact that this is non-essential does not exempt us from meeting requirements. The text-based summary would need to provide equivalent information as the video does for a traditional end user. 

True? 



thank you,
charlene zvolanek
webmaster (3 weeks in)
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us 
512-936-2505