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...inappropriately those with age-related impairments, but also because content is commonly aimed at youthful, technologically adept minority who are familiar with the conventions in use. Although the dangers of digital exclusion have been recognized politically, (1) a vital prerequisite for a truly accessible Web is to ensure that designers are equipped with knowledge about nontypical users and the barriers that they can encounter. Although research knowledge about such barriers is available, it is often in impractical forms for communicating with working designers. In this paper some ways of giving designers the knowledge to produce more widely accessible Web content are explored. The current tendency for designers to rely on guidelines and automated tools alone is examined and critiqued, and supplementary strategies are suggested.
The development of online services is an exciting, potentially inclusive process, but it currently runs the risk of excluding a large proportion of the population. Recent figures from the UK Department for Education and Skills show that only around 12 percent of people aged 40-60 without educational qualifications use the Internet, and of those aged over 60 (regardless of education), this figure is only 8 percent. (2) In early 2004 in the United States, only 22 percent of those over 65 used the Internet. (3) Although some of this low level of use is due to other factors, such as the perception that computer technology is irrelevant and excessively expensive, (4) its main cause lies with the difficulties involved in using the Web for many older people.
With a global trend toward legislation protecting the rights of disabled people, providing online information and services in a way that makes access difficult or impossible for people with age-related impairments may also be unlawful in some countries. In Australia, for example, the courts ruled that the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 applied to Web sites when, in 2000, they ruled against the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games for providing a Web site with access barriers. (5)
In the United States, following conflicting outcomes of recent court cases, the applicability of the Americans with Disabilities Act to Web content remains uncertain at the time of this writing. (6) However, the rights of disabled people in the United States not to encounter "digital exclusion" when interacting with federal agencies, are preserved by amendments to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. (7) By requiring conformance with a set of technical standards for accessibility, (8) Section 508 sets out clear and specific obligations of federal agencies to ensure the accessibility of both online information provided to the public and information and communication technology provided to agencies' employees.
While no legislation specifically referring to Web accessibility exists in the United Kingdom, under the terms of Part III of the United Kingdom's Disability Discrimination Act (1995), it is illegal for providers of goods, facilities, and services to unjustifiably discriminate against persons because of their disability, through either denial of access to a service or provision of a poorer service. This implies that if a service is available through a Web site and is unavailable in other forms (e.g., discounted airline tickets), discrimination may occur if the Web site presents serious accessibility barriers to a disabled person. (9)
It is unfortunate that the term "accessibility" in this area has become associated almost exclusively with technology that can transform the predominantly visual content of the Web into other modalities (e.g., screen readers for the blind). Obviously, without such technologies many disabled people, including older people with severe visual impairments, would find the Web inaccessible in an absolute sense. However mast older people, even those who could benefit from using assistive technologies, are unlikely to perceive themselves as in need of specialized solutions. Even in cases where assistive technologies are preferred by older people, these might not always be available (e.g., in an Internet cafe on holiday). Thus the assumption that Web pages can simply be designed for "normal" people and "abnormal" people can use assistive technologies if necessary, means that the real needs of many older people are ignored, and as a result, a great deal of Web content is effectively inaccessible to this group.
Gregor et al. (10,11) suggest a more sensitive approach to understanding the needs of users, one that addresses the dynamic diversity of the human species rather than splitting user populations into bipolar categories of ability/disability. Key to this approach is a change in attitude on the part of designers in which their awareness of this diversity is raised and a more user-sensitive design strategy is developed. Clearly, such an approach requires the designer to move beyond guidelines (see Reference 12 for a compendium of research and Web guidelines, see Reference 13 for an overview of computer use, and see Reference 14 for more general factors in designing for older users).
One aspect of such a holistic approach involves seeking out sources of advice on the Web. However, given the vast amount of information available in this way, the designer should approach such resources with caution. The problems associated with attempting to follow guidelines without a sufficient grasp of the underlying purpose behind them is discussed in this paper. A similar caveat applies to the use of Web-based resources; designers should not approach the resources expecting to find a checklist that removes the need for a more considered approach to accessibility and usability. Any resources and advice provided must be studied and reflected upon, so that designers can begin to build a clearer picture of the underlying factors that will enhance the accessibility and usability of their work.
With this in mind, the authors view the following resources as constructive elements of the holistic approach to understanding the broader context of accessibility and usability. A List Apart (15) offers information on accessibility, usability, and Web standards from a design perspective, and thus the language and motivation behind much of the advice will be familiar to designers. Accessify (16,17) provides a range of tutorials and articles on accessible Web design, as well as a discussion forum used by accessibility and usability professionals. Joe Clark, (18) author of the popular book Building Accessible Websites, (19) provides a variety of resources including articles, weblogs, and also an online version of the book. WebAIM (20) (Web Accessibility in Mind) presents a wide range of advice on accessibility, from an introductory level to advanced techniques, such as captioning of multimedia content. The narrative writing style of Dive into Accessibility (21) makes it highly engaging, and the use of personas to describe how different accessibility issues might affect real people fosters a more personal approach to accessibility than most article-based resources. More information about these and other resources can be found on the Digital Media Access Group Web site, (22) and, in particular, in Reference 23.
The phrase "standards-compliant" is increasingly used in the context of Web site design. No formal definition exists, but when used by grassroots organizations like the Web Standards Project, (24) it generally refers not to standards from standards-producing organizations such as ISO (25) or IEEE, (26) but primarily to recommendations issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (27) (W3C **). There is some debate as to whether the recommendations issued by the W3C can be referred to as "standards"--they are not officially referred to as such by the W3C themselves--but their intended use as a de facto standard for creating interoperable, robust, and optimally accessible Web content may define them as standards in many people's view.
In the context of Web design, "standards-compliant" is generally used to mean a Web site that has been designed using--and where appropriate validated against--W3C Web technology specifications. These are normally HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or XHTML (28) (Extensible HTML) for the page structure, Cascading Style Sheets (29) (CSS) for the site's appearance, and the Document Object Models (30) (DOM) for dynamic functionality. This is the definition of "standards-compliant" used in this paper. Some interpretations of "standards-compliant" extend the term to include the use of other W3C technology specifications, such as Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) or Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), or conformance with a particular level of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (31) (WCAG).
The term "accessibility" is used to refer to the ability of a range of people to use Web content; in this way it encompasses much of what is also termed "usability," particularly in the sense of "usability problems." Toward the other end of the "usability" dimension are issues related less to "barriers" and "difficulties" and more to "enjoyment," "engagement," and the like. These too are important components of people's ability to satisfactorily use the Web but are beyond the scope of this paper, which will focus more on what...
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