I have come across a very interesting paper regarding how people with disabilities use the web - http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/. It tackles important issues such as different types of disabilities, assistive technologies and adaptive strategies and illustrates various scenarios of impaired users utilizing the web. People with disability have the same right to access the Web as people with no disability do. In order to facilitate these people’s lives, WAI provides standards and guidelines for easier web access. Moreover, people with disability to simply access the web, need various types of assistive technologies and adaptive strategies.
One may assume that only special software is required for people with disability to use the computer and the web, but special and adequate devices are essential! Assistive technologies and adaptive strategies are needed to help the user with a particular impairment to use the computer and the web easily without any difficulty. People who can not use the ordinary keyboard due to physical impairment requires special keyboards such as on-screen and eye-gaze keyboards. Speech recognition would also be necessary for people with physical disability. Blind people require Braille devices such as Braille keyboard and monitors. Furthermore screen readers would also facilitate his/her computer/web access. On the other hand, people with vision impairment would need screen magnifiers for better viewing. A variety of both adaptive software and hardware is available nowadays catering for the needs of people with disability. Furthermore there are also alternative browsers such as text and voice browsers since some users would not be able to use the GUI browsers.
In my opinion, it is really fascinating how things have evolved throughout the years and how much improvement has been done so far to include all people with different kind of disabilities, thus being inclusive!
I must say that nowadays we are being bombarded with terms such as "accessibility" and "inclusion". But is the Web really bridging the accessibility divide?
ReplyDeleteMost of the sites are based on visual navigation. For instance I rely a lot on the graphics provided before I decide to buy something online. Moreover, it is not very common to access a site which has a voice over feature. Thus, can we say that such site is accessible by a person who is visually impaired? On the other, would it be ideal for someone to listen to the content all at one go. This would probably lead to an information overload. Personally, I am quite sceptic on the utopic vision of providing a web accessibility to all. On the other hand, I am aware that there have been many attempt of implementing different techniques such as context-directed browsing or process modeling.
As mentioned by Silvana, indeed technology has evolved drastically throughout the years. We hope that when implementing e-learning, inclusion is kept in mind and catered for and thus, no one will suffer from any type of exclusion.