Abstract
Anticipation of a user's profile of accessibility needs and preferences can be based on their actual needs and preferences, as stated by or for them, if these are in an interoperable, descriptive form. Enabling this means providing technologies that match resources to the user's nominated needs and preferences. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, endorsed by all countries, has been adopted as law in many jurisdictions. In Australia, for example, there is discrimination law that obliges publishers to make resources accessible to all who need them. This can be done by enabling students to describe their needs and preferences and matching those to accessibility features and functions of resources. This means developing a suitable metadata standard. The International Standards Organisation is engaged in such work.
TopBackground
There has been unprecedented support for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (2006), Article 9 includes the following:
To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems, and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas. (2006)
UN Conventions are not effective, despite being popular, until they are enacted, one way or another for a jurisdiction. One context for what is now known as ‘accessibility’ is a jurisdiction where prescriptive laws apply. The other, converse situation, is where there are recommendations for good practice but the ultimate question is, post hoc, such as ‘has the user been discriminated against’.
TopDifferent Approaches To The Same Problems
Jurisdictional Differences
Some jurisdictions prescribe what a publisher has to do to make a resource accessible to all who need it. In others, such as in Australia, it is generally not prescribed but there are implications for not making it suitably accessible. The first approach, a bit like a ‘bill of rights’ approach, is used in many jurisdictions around the world in various ways. The second approach is consistent with British style legal protections that depend upon the individual circumstances being evaluated retrospectively by the law (by a judge or jury). Either way, a publisher may be guilty of illegitimate discrimination against a person. This, in some ways, supports the notion that everyone has a right to the same quality of life, however that needs to be achieved.
The first jurisdiction would be one in which there are certain criteria that must be satisfied in the publication of a resource. Here, a resource can be almost anything digital – a service, an image, a webpage, a digital version of a document for printing, and this includes interactive or dynamic content. In Australia, for instance, resources provided by the Commonwealth Government, and thus funded by them, must satisfy a particular set of guidelines to a particular level1. This means that a resource can be tested against the guidelines and an agent publishing it, when it fails, has committed an offense. Satisfying the guidelines, however, does not mean that the resource is accessible to everyone and so a particular user may not be able to access it despite its compliance. This may be the case because of the inherent limitations of the guidelines or because the user does not fit the model on which the guidelines were based. In a jurisdiction of the second kind, the question of compliance is determined after the event, sometimes long after it, and often judgmentally, by high-ranking officials.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Semantic Accessibility: Enabled comprehension of something because it can be used as an expression that the user can understand. Examples include being presented in a modified language form or accompanied by explanatory images, according to the user’s abilities.
Metadata: An encoded digital description of a resource, digital or otherwise.
Just-in-Time: An action undertaken at the time when it is being relied upon.
Just-in-Case: An action undertaken because in the future, according to the circumstances, it may be relied upon.
Access for All: The name given to the approach of matching resources’ accessibility characteristics to user’s individual accessibility profiles initiated for IMS Global.
Functional Accessibility: Enabled usability of something because it can be made to do what its user wants it to do. Examples include being spoken aloud when a vision-impaired user could not work with it as text or able to be manipulated using a button when a user could not manage a cursor.
Disability: The AccessForAll approach to accessibility considers a disability to be a mismatch between what is usable by someone and what they are attempting to use, not a medically defined condition. For example, vision-impaired may mean using one’s eyes to watch the road when driving and asking a phone for directions.
Digital Resource: Anything that is delivered by an electronic device including images, websites, interactive games, forms, etc.
Discrimination: Legally, according to the relevant jurisdiction, discrimination is defined many ways but in popular conversation it means that someone is missing out on something because they are being treated differently from others. Typically, discrimination is associated with arbitrary exemption of people according to race, religion, color, or medical or mental differences.