Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes
Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and ProcessesThis page contains access to a paper on "Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes" which was accepted for the International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility. This workshop has the theme "Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web: Hindrance or Opportunity?" and was held in Banff, Canada on 7-8th May 2007.
The paper was presented by Brian Kelly on Tuesday, 8th May 2007.
In addition an embedded version of the paper is included below (if your browser supports Flash). This is an embedded version of the resource hosted on the Scribd repository service.
An MP3 version of the paper
was available.
This has been created by the Scribd service
from a linearised version of the paper, with author details, etc. moved to
the end of the file. However on 5 September 2008 it was noted that this
resource was not longer available. It would seem that SCribd have withdrawn the
service which converted the text to speech.
Accessibility 2.0: People, Policies and Processes,
Kelly, B., Sloan, D., Brown, S., Seale, J, Petrie, H., Lauke, P. and Ball, S.
WWW 2007 Banff, Canada, 7-11 May 2007.
<http://www.w4a.info/2007/prog/15-kelly.pdf> (PDF format).
Also available at
<http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/w4a-2007/>
(multiple formats).
The workof the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is described in a set of technical guidelines designed to maximise accessibility to digital resources. Further activities continue to focus on technical developments, with current discussions exploring the potential merits of use of Semantic Web and Web 2.0 approaches. In this paper we argue that the focus on technologies can be counter-productive. Rather than seeking to enhance accessibility through technical innovations, the authors argue that the priority should be for a user-focussed approach, which embeds best practices through the development of achievable policies and processes and which includes all stakeholders in the process of maximising accessibility.
The paper reviews previous work in this area and summarises criticisms of WAI's approach. The paper further develops a tangram model which describes a pluralistic, as opposed to a universal, approach to Web accessibility, which encourages creativity and diversity in developing accessible services. Such diversity will need to reflect the context of usage, including the aims of a service (informational, educational, cultural, etc.), the users' and the services providers' environment.
The paper describes a stakeholder approach to embedding best practices, which recognises that organisations will encounter difficulties in developing sustainable approaches by addressing only the needs of the end user and the Web developer. The paper describes work which has informed the ideas in this paper and plans for further work, including an approach to advocacy and education which coins the "Accessibility 2.0" term to describe a renewed approach to accessibility, which builds on previous work but prioritises the importance of the user. The paper concludes by describing the implications of the ideas described in this paper for WAI and for accessibility practitioner stakeholders.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.5.2 [User Interfaces - Evaluation/methodology];
K.4.2 [Social Issues - Assistive technologies for persons with disabilities]
General Terms
Measurement, Documentation, Human Factors, Standardization, Legal Aspects, Verification.
Keywords
Web accessibility, people with disabilities, WAI, WCAG, guidelines,
methodologies, contextual design.
On 13 July 2008 2 citations was found for this paper using Harzing's Publish or Perish tool, which makes use of Googlar Scholar.
The latest information can be found from Google Scholar
Please note that this page does not validate due to the embedded object.
