Ocawa
Definitions of accessibility
Accessibility is about removing unintended obstacles to information. The WWW has fast become the de facto repository for an ever growing mountain of information and services. Design for all implies that this information should not be kept from certain users at certain times or places simply due to constraints or handicaps, physical or otherwise, that they work under. These could include, for example, the screen size or bandwidth of the device they are using.
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director
"To put the internet and its services at the disposal of all individuals, whatever their hardware or software requirements, their netork infrastructure, their native language, their cultural background, their geographic location, or their physical or mental aptitudes."
Thinking ahead within a framework of "design for all" is about anticipating a variety of usages, locations, and types of users, without making any exclusive a priori decisions about them.
Denis Chêne, France-Telecom R&D
The accessibility of a web document is at the same time a function of its availability on the network as well as the quality of a user's aprehension of that document and the information it contains. It is important to emphasize the fact that a significant number of computer users are obliged to operate under a variety of "different" contexts: they may have visual impairements, be deaf or partially deaf, or suffer various forms of paralysis.
The way in which information information is accessed or used is therefore a function of user-context: it is altered through the presensce or absence of certain components or hardware.
The accessibility of a document is its capacity to be understood via a wide range of potential set-ups (hardware) or applications (software), these being manipulated (or not) by a range of users having varying perceptive and cognitive capacities, and operating from diverse physical and cultural environments. Strictly speaking, the information in the document remains invariant, and is not subject to distortion or omission simply by the type of device used to access it. Accessibility.
