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There is a growing awareness and concern with Accessibility at all levels of society. This has previously related to the accessibility of buildings and traditional media. However, this is now being extended to include the accessibility of online information and services made available through web sites.
Most of us assume that visitors to our web pages can see the wonderful graphics we include. However, many users are visually impaired and use special programs to read text to them. Also, those who are color-blind might have problems navigating your site if you rely on color to convey information. Still, other users are unable to use a mouse or may use a text-based web browser called Lynx, which has no pictures and uses the keyboard for navigation rather than a mouse.
The key principle underlining accessibility is that web sites should be easy for everyone to use, including people with disabilities.
Not all people with disabilities have problems using computers to access the web, but some disabilities can present severe obstacles. Those most associated with access difficulties are:
- Visual Impairment: Low vision, restricted vision or color blindness.
- Motor Skills: Inability to use a keyboard or mouse, inability to make fine movements,
hearing impairment.
- Cognitive Abilities: Reading difficulties, dyslexia or memory loss.
- Low Grade Technology: Slow connections or old versions of software.
People with these impairments may have difficulty perceiving or processing some types of information. They may be unable to use common input devices such as a keyboard or mouse. They may have to rely on special assistive technologies to enable them to provide inputs and perceive outputs. For example, blind users may use a screen reader, which is a program that reads the contents of the screen aloud in a synthetic voice. Users who have low acuity vision may use a screen magnifier program, which enlarges a selected portion of the screen. People with motor impairments may require a special keyboard or a pointing device controlled by a joystick or by head movements.
Although it may seem that the world wide web has been like the wild, wild, west, where there are no laws and each frontier web site is on its own, there are significant legal and practical reasons for ensuring web accessibility. By web accessibility, we refer to the design of a web page that embraces the requirements of universal design in order to ensure that all users can access the information on the page.
Unless a web site is designed in an accessible format, significant populations will be locked out, as the world wide web rapidly advances from a text-based communication format to a robust, graphical format embracing audio and video clip tools.
Yet, the benefits of accessible web design extend beyond the community of people with disabilities and an aging population since it enables low technology to access high technology. There are substantial business incentives for technology transfer in underdeveloped countries and for populations who do not have the "state of the art" technology. Accessible web design features enable CD technology and videotapes to be archived with word search capabilities due to text captioning. Even people who are illiterate can access the Internet since screen readers can audibly read text out loud from accessible web pages.
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