Web accessibility is the measure of how well web-delivered content is processed by E&IT equipment and software, including assistive technology. In addition to being accessible, web content should also be usable. Usability refers to performance, ease of use, and understandability of web-delivered content. Both accessibility and usability are necessary for effective websites.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is considered the de facto standards body for web specifications. According to the W3C, web accessibility means, "access to the web by everyone, regardless of disability or method of access." An important thing to note about this definition is that it specifies two areas of concentration – disability and "method of access." The vast majority of accessibility issues are "method of access" issues for people without disabilities.
Topics in web accessibility and how they affect you as a faculty web author/designer include:
- Web sites and web-enabled applications
- The proper implementation of web technologies greatly affects the accessibility of your web sites and web applications.
- Web authoring tools and evolving web technologies
- Web authoring tools and technologies have varying degrees of accessibility support. Choosing tools and technologies that provide good accessibility makes your job as a web designer much easier.
- If you are a web designer with a disability, choosing authoring tools that are accessible is important.
- Web browsers and media players
- Designing web sites and applications to be used with a specific browser is not recommended. Knowing the caveats of the different browsers can help you make design choices so that your website is accessible using any format.
- Knowledge of how assistive technologies interact with your web sites and applications will help you make efficient design choices.
Going Further: Java Accessibility Information
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/jaccess-1.0/doc/guide.html
It's important to note that good web accessibility is a function of design, not the technology used. For example, many faculty ask the question, "Is Javascript accessible?" The answer is, "It depends on how it's used." Javascript is not inherently inaccessible, but the implementation of Javascript can be. The use of Javascript is not the issue. The same principle applies to virtually all web technologies. This is where your responsibility as a faculty web designer comes into play.
Screen reader technology and web accessibility Demohttp://www.washington.edu/accessit/surfing.php
Duration: 2.7 minutes
For more information about web accessibility, visit
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/#in
Key Concept: Web technologies are not inherently inaccessible, but the implementation of a technology may be.
Key concept: Web accessibility is the degree to which information presented through the Web is accessible and usable, especially by people with disabilities.
Who benefits from web accessibility?
Web accessibility is mistakenly thought to only benefit people with disabilities. But, in fact, the majority of people who benefit from accessible design of web and information content are people without disabilities.
Here is an illustration.
In 1990 when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, its provisions provided for the removal of physical barriers to accessibility. One of the features mandated in the ADA was the ramp. No one would argue that ramps were useful to people with disabilities. However, many years later, observation demonstrates that the vast majority of people who use ramps are not disabled; they are parents with their children in carriages, deliverymen with hand-trucks full of packages, college students moving their stuff into the dorm, everyday people who don't feel like taking the stairs. What started out as something done for people with disabilities was, in fact, good universal design for everyone.
So it is with web accessibility. Efforts that we take to ensure web-based accessibility of our curricula, information and services for students with disabilities benefit all of our students because the same rules that make information accessible for students with disabilities also make information accessible for people without disabilities that use a variety of access devices. A good example of this is the proliferation of digital mobile phones. These devices are increasingly capable of accessing information from a variety of sources, including the web. If our web-based information lacks accessibility, then we create information systems without "ramps."
Key concept: The same techniques that make the Web accessible to people with disabilities make the Web accessible to people without disabilities who access information with a variety of devices and in a variety of environments.
Usability
The term "web accessibility" is generally applied to techniques of web design to accommodate users with disabilities. But there is more to accessibility than disability access.
The World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0 (WCAG1.0) (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/) treat the issue of usability in guidelines 12 through 14, but they are not called usability guidelines. The WGAG1.0 terms are "understandability and navigability" of websites. In the ISO9241 standard, usability refers to how efficient, effective and accurate a "product" is. In our case, the product is a website. Combining the two, we will define web usability as the efficiency, effectiveness, accuracy, understandability and navigability of a web resource.
Key concept:Web usability is the efficiency, effectiveness, accuracy, understandability, and navigability of a web resource.
A website can have good accessibility without having good usability. Web usability may depend upon the format of the information provided, layout, ease of navigation, but it also may depend upon the information itself. For example, content targeted for an audience with a high level of competency may be inappropriate for audiences of lower competency. This issue has nothing to do with accessibility (the information may be very accessible) but everything to do with effectiveness and understandability.
Therefore, the goal is to create websites that are both accessible and usable.
