Menu

 

 You are in: Home - Accessibility

Accessibility

From the Handbook for quality in cultural Web sites Improving quality for citizens, paragraph 2.2:

A Web site is considered to be accessible when the informational content, navigational modes and all the interactive features present are accessible to all users, regardless of disabilities and independently of technology used to access the site and of the context in which they are working whilst accessing the site.

To give an idea of the vastness of the definition, it is worth while quoting the situations described in the introduction to Guidelines - Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

For those unfamiliar with accessibility issues pertaining to Web page design, consider that many users may be operating in contexts very different from your own:

  • They may not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all.
  • They may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
  • They may not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse.
  • They may have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection.
  • They may not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.
  • They may be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are busy or interfered with (e.g., driving to work, working in a loud environment, etc.).
  • They may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.

Content developers must consider these different situations during page design.

In the contexts described above, particular attention is paid to disabled users or users with specific disabilities, both in terms of reference to instruments which these users may employ for computer use in general, and for navigation on the Web in particular.

Useful links

Accessibility of museum, library and archive websites: the MLA audit
Report based on a sample of 300 museums, libraries and archives in UK, compared with 25 museums at international level
http://www.mla.gov.uk/information/publications/00pubs.asp