Accessibility

The issues surrounding whether or not users can access Web 2.0 materials are, at the 'technical' level, largely the same for these new formats as they have been for more conventional online and web-based materials. The advice and strategies to make them more accessible are therefore well established. All web-based materials and applications share a large number of opportunities and difficulties for some users. The nature of materials in an online form can make them more easily accessible than if it were carried in any other medium, by virtue of it being carried online. It is important to remember that changing the size, font and text and contrast colours of online materials can make them available to some users who could not otherwise access the content. These options are rarely available for materials bulk printed onto pages. With many Web 2.0 materials there is no 'conventional' medium available anyway and as such adaptations are common.

No material is equally accessible and usable for everyone. Accessibility of online materials is a question of degree, driven by the amount of effort and care expended to improve accessibility and by the aptitudes and abilities of the individual user. The incentives to encourage developers to make the effort to improve access come from cultural desires to make their products available for everyone and the commercial drive to maximise market size. All online materials offer opportunities that enable materials to be accessed more widely and have barriers that exclude some users, examples of some of these are noted below.

Example Opportunities:

• Reading is easier where text and colours can be changed, or where text can be read out to the user either by the application or by a user controlled software application.
• Writing and inputting text can be aided by writing tools or voice recognition software.
• Navigation around the features of the application is helped by a logical 'tab' order and by features to provide information in a logical fashion to the users of screen readers.

Example Barriers:

• Material that depends solely on visual information can be difficult or impossible for those who are blind to interpret.
• Information that is carried as a graphical object can also exclude those with visual impairment.
• Information carried solely by audio can be inaccessible to deaf or hearing impaired people.

Web-based tools offer a whole new set of ways with which businesses and individuals can interact with one another. It is important to ensure that any tool used has been designed effectively in order to offer maximum accessibility to a wide range of users. This is not only good practice, but depending on the context, there might also be a legal requirement under the Disability Discrimination Act. However, it is important to recognise two things:

1. Web-based solutions often offer significant advantages over the traditional alternatives.
2. An ideal solution for one user might not be an ideal solution for another.

In some cases, it is very easy to provide a workaround for an accessibility difficulty. For example, a business may create a series of podcasts to keep customers or collaborators up-to-date. This would benefit blind or dyslexic users but would provide a barrier for deaf users. The workaround in this case would be simple; either a transcript of the podcast or an executive summary of the key points. In other cases it is not so simple - a fully accessible alternative may not exist, the website may be technically accessible but cognitively meaningless to people with a particular disability (e.g. visualisations of social networks). In these circumstances it is not necessarily justifiable to discriminate against a large number of beneficiaries just because a small number of users cannot be equally advantaged. The critical factors to accessibility include:

• Ensuring information can be provided in different ways.
• Being explicit about how information can be offered.
• Providing clear routeways to relevant people where the user has difficulties in accessing the technology.

TechDis advocates using a task based approach rather than a tool based approach. For example, if the task requirement is to enable a disparate group of people to collaborate on a document the following options are available:

1. Set up a shared online document using GoogleDocs or similar.
2. Set up a wiki.
3. Send round a first draft as a Microsoft® Word document and use Track Changes to contribute additions or amendments.
4. Send round a first draft as an email and get participants to add comments as appropriate.
5. Post a first draft as a blog and email all participants the password so each can create a new blog entry by cutting, pasting and amending the previous entry.
6. Post a first draft as a blog and get participants to use the commenting feature to suggest additions or amendments.
7. Set up an online audio conference (for example with Skype) and discuss the contents, shaping the main document structure by using the text chat facility.
8. Divide the writing into subsections, and get each author to create a draft podcast of their section which can be uploaded onto a file sharing site like e-snips.
9. Divide the writing into subsections, and get each author to post to a specific audio chat site like yackpack.
10. Post a paper copy to all participants and get them to add pencil notes where they want to make amendments or additions and send back to lead author!

The advantage with this task based approach is that it opens up possibilities rather than closing them down. It also means that there are always alternatives so if one system creates accessibility barriers for a participant another system can be used.