Is Your Site ‘Cynthia Tested’?
On your site you make sure to get all the various verifications and certifications: W3C CSS, XHTML, Verisign, etc., etc.. … We all know what RSS is and can decide which standard to use, as well.
But is your site Cynthia Tested? A project of the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI), the Cynthia certification says that your site is accessible to people with disabilities
If you write to their specifications you can put their button on your site
. It’s not clear there’s an actual Cynthia (seems to be a joke), but the mission seems rather serious, and beneficial. I found the certification on the University of North Carolina’s Ancient World Mapping site (thanks, Andrea), and the Cynthia Says news page has more institutions that use it.
How many media or news Web sites — which like to talk of themselves as serving the community — test their sites for people with disabilities? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the insignia on a media site.