Keys to Accessibility

• Current Guidelines
• Further Research

Research in accessibility is currently focused in two main areas.  Many researchers are studying specific ways of implementing accessibility within a given technology.  For an example, look at the work of Asakawa and Takagi (172) in studying a transcoding system for annotation of Web pages.  Ponitelli et al. (180) are seeking a means of easily navigating tables, frames, and forms on a Web page for blind uses. 

Other researchers are looking at more theoretical questions of accessibility.  For example, the idea of universal design, taken to its extreme, has interesting implications. Traditionally, accessibility design provides accommodations for disabled users – an alternate interface that disabled users can use in place of the “normal” interface to view and modify the same information.  Universal design suggests that this approach is a wasteful one; that designers should be able to create a single, unified interface that is accessible to all users.  To take a more concrete example, Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990613.html) points out that the WAI continues to suggest that Web designers create a single HTML page that will adapt to all different usage circumstances.  But, he says, the difference between the huge screen of a 21” monitor and a handheld computer implies that the same pages will not satisfy both sets of users.  Similarly, he says, “one can make Web pages much more usable for blind users and users with other disabilities by designing explicitly for these groups.”

Researchers such as Keates, Clarkson and Robinson (129) are seeking to learn how well traditional usability models translate to the needs of accessible users.  Hampel et al. (258) are examining virtual communities and seeking to learn how blind users can best interact with them.  In both cases, the researchers are looking not at specific technologies but at a general question: how do we provide the best usability to disabled users at minimal additional design cost?

As accessibility is a relatively new and continuously evolving field, it’s important for designers to keep in mind, not just the recommendations currently available for specific technologies, but the research currently ongoing that may change the way we support better and more inexpensive means of providing accessibility in the future.  Designers who work to provide this accessibility are not simply creating a good design for their users, but are enabling users with disabilities to lead more independent lives mere decades after the traditional lot of a person with a disability was at home or in an institution.  Such designs benefit, not just the individual user, but the overall community.

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