Equal Access to the Digital World!

What does it mean to provide equal access to the digital world? It would be easy to think in terms of your own life when asked this question. For the average person equal access means such things as the ability to afford a device to access digital information and access to the World Wide Web. For those with disabilities, equal access means much more. Try to imagine being blind and needing to use a web site that does not have the code necessary to convert text to speech. What would you do? If you need the web site for school, can you complete the same assignment? Challenges such as these make it necessary for development standards to be followed that will give every user of digital technology equal access. Like most things, if the standards are followed from the onset, the extra effort is little extra cost.