Colleges Strive to Give Disabled Students Access to On-Line Courses

By DAN CARNEVALE

As they race to expand their distance-education offerings, colleges and universities are finding that they must include the virtual equivalents of wheelchair ramps when building their on-line classrooms.

They must accommodate, for instance, the sophomore who can't see the impressive navigational graphics on a Web page because he's blind, and the graduate student who can't listen to a streamed audio lecture because she's deaf. In fact, many students with