It's part of Section 508 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act which was revised in 1998. The section spells out, for the first time, standards for developing accessible web pages.

Considering the number of people who use the Internet who need a way to listen to text and navigate with voice, web accessibility makes sense. An article in the May 21 Federal Computer Week gives a good overview of the issue. The National Park Service has a number of links to valuable accessibility resources including simplified version of the guidelines at http://www.nps.gov/access/target.htm If you're a web developer, JAWS For Windows has a trial version you can download to test how your site sounds to text-to-voice screen readers, at http://www.hj.com/JAWS/JAWS.html And Bobby, a free service provided by the Center for Applied Special Technology, can help web page authors identify and repair significant barriers to access by individuals with disabilities.

Does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to the Internet? Several laws govern accessibility of websites.

What are the implications of requiring the Internet to be accessible to everyone?

While opponents of access claim it is costly to provide access, in fact the opposite is true: It is the added-on graphics and other showy displays of sound and animation that are costly -- both to produce and to maintain.

Basic access is built into the architecture of the World Wide Web and has been since the infancy of the internet, as Judy Brewer of the World Wide Web consortium can explain.

But even sites that today operate with high-end graphics and sound displays can easily be made accessible. Accessible sites have many advantages: