Introduction to web accessibility and universal design

February 23, 2007 · Posted in Uncategorized 

Hi, I’m Laurence Veale. I’m a senior usability analyst at iQ Content. I’ll be posting a series on accessibility. First up, an introduction to accessibility.

Before I try and define accessibility let’s have a go at defining disability, something I find very difficult to do. According to the CSO, in 2002, “disabled” people accounted for 8.3% of the population. But is that the full picture?
Let’s take three categories:

  • Vision
  • Mobility
  • Cognitive

There are those from mild vision impairments, colour blind, glaucoma to the fully blind. Similarly, there are those who have little or no mobility at all, and those who may be temporarily immobile due to repetitive strain injury, or a sporting injury.

“I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to use my computer mostly via keyboard and voice control, trying to avoid touching my mouse (recurring overuse injury in my elbow)” Donna Maurer, Australia

Already it’s becoming quite clear that it’s not a black and white issue and it’s quite difficult to label groups of people on whether they are “abled” or “disabled”.

So there’s a spectrum, and to some degree we’re all on it. The main disability we all suffer from is ageing. And it’s terminal. But before we get to the terminal stage, for most of us our eyesight will start to deteriorate, we’ll have reduced mobility through arthritis, and we’ll lose some of our cognitive capacity. Not a lot to look forward to!
Tim Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the web, had this to say in an interview on the British Computer Society website:

“Another important area of professionalism is accessibility awareness. Everyone should be accommodated, especially when around 20 per cent of the population have special requirements.

In fact, Microsoft said recently that nearly 50 per cent of people need to make some sort of adjustment to their system to interact with it. Having turned 50, I’m very aware of receiving email with very small fonts – people don’t want to use their spectacles to look at a Web page!”

Where does web accessibility fit in to all this?

There is one school of thought that web accessibility is all about catering for disabled people, but as I mentioned, “disabled” is very hard to define as a single category or demographic. So how do you cater for everybody?

Universal design

However, there’s another school of thought, called universal design, the idea (or some would argue “ideal”) of designing for everybody.

In practical terms and from the perspective of websites, in addition to incorporating the needs of disabled people, universal design could include, amongst others:

Your website has the potential to take away the physical barriers that exist in the world of bricks and mortar. Take one simple example, thanks to the web, blind visitors can read the newspaper on the day it is published (provided the website is designed correctly).

Dr. Mark Magennis, director of the Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT), part of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, spoke at our Boot Camp last year and described universal design in the simple terms of:

“Accessible design is good design”

Finally, no introduction to accessibility would be complete without the ubiquitous quote from Tim Berners-Lee:

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”

What’s next in the series?

In my next few posts, I hope to cover

  • Web standards & accessibility: better for everyone
  • Web standards case study: review of a major Irish institution’s homepage and the business case for accessibility
  • Accessibility & the Law
  • Rapid-fire accessibility audits: how to assess the accessibility of your own site
  • And anything you’d like me to cover? Email me at laurence.veale@iqcontent.com or leave a comment below.

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2 Responses to “Introduction to web accessibility and universal design”

  1. iia blog » Introduction to web standards on February 27th, 2007 7:08 pm

    [...] Hello again. I’m Laurence Veale, senior usability analyst with iQ Content. This is my second post as guest blogger here on the IIA blog. Last week, I posted an introduction to accessibility. This time around I’m talking web standards. [...]

  2. » Introduction to accessibility and universal design - iQ Blog on July 11th, 2008 10:10 am

    [...] just posted up my first in a series of blog posts on accessibility over at the IIA [...]

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