Web accessibility: some considerations
- The Web is the fastest-adopted technology in history
- The Web is becoming a key resource for:
- information gathering (news, information, commerce, entertainment)
- education (classroom education, distance learning)
- employement (job searching, and workplace interaction)
- civic participation (laws, voting, government information, services
- Web accessibility is a cross-disability issue, as the Web can
present barriers to people with different kinds of disabilities:
- visual disabilities (unlabeled graphics, undescribed video, poorly
marked-up tables or frames, lack of keyboard support or screen reader
compatibility)
- hearing disabilities (lack of captioning for audio,
proliferation of text without visual signposts)
- physical disabilities (lack of keyboard or single-switch support
for menu commands)
- cognitive or neurological disabilities
(lack of consistent navigation structure, overly complex
presentation or language, lack of illustrative non-text materials,
flickering or strobing designs on pages)
- Aging sometimes results in combinations of accessibility issues
(like vision and hearing changes, dexterity
- Accessibility is a social,
technological and marketplace issue.
- Accessibility contributes to better design
for other users ("Design for all")
- Web accessibility is a quality issue (correctness, comprehensibility,
navigability, are essential
characteristics of accessible web sites).
