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In an effort to address the needs of all users, the Illinois Technology
Office has established the Illinois Web Accessibility Standards
(IWAS). On February 14, 2002, the Governor of Illinois signed an
Administrative Order
directing Illinois agencies to "utilize the Illinois Web Accessibility
Standards for the development of web sites, intranets, and web-based
applications."
These standards are based on Federal
"Section 508" and World
Wide Web Consortium accessibility guidelines, which were reviewed
extensively by a panel of experts during the preparation of IWAS.
You may wonder why the Illinois Technology Office has created an
additional set of standards when the Section 508 and W3C standards
already exist. The answer is quite simple: The federal Section 508
guidelines deal with a very basic level of accessibility needs while
leaving out many issues facing users. The W3C guidelines, on the
other hand, offer three tiers of priorities that go into greater
depth than many government entities are able to address at this
time. IWAS incorporate a combination of the two creating a standard
well suited to serve the users of Illinois web sites.
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