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Presenter(s)
Terry Thompson
AccessIT
Box 355670
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Voice 206/221-4168
TTY 206-685-3648
Email: tft@u.washington.edu
There are many examples in society of innovations that were originally intended for people with disabilities, but that have provided access benefits to all people. Curb cuts and automatic door openers are common examples from the build environment. There are many additional examples from the World Wide Web.
A formal definition of universal design is "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design" (Center for Universal Design). This practice, when applied to the Web, results in web content that is accessible to the broadest possible audience, including people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities who access the web using a wide variety of input and output technologies. The following are a few examples of how universal web design benefits all users:
* Text alternatives to visual content (e.g., providing ALT tags for images) benefits anyone who doesn't have immediate access to graphics. While this group includes people with blindness, it also includes those sighted computer users who surf the web using text-based browsers, users with slow Internet connections who may have disabled the display of graphics, users of handheld computing devices, and users of voice web and web portal systems including car-based systems.
* Text alternatives to audio content (e.g., including captions with multimedia) provides access to people with limited or no access to sound output. This includes people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but additionally includes anyone trying to access the content in a noisy environment, and people with missing, broken, or otherwise inadequate sound hardware. Captioned multimedia also allows the content to be indexed and archived so that it is fully searchable.
* Avoiding use of color to convey essential information ensures that the information is accessible to those who can't reliably discriminate between colors. This group includes people with color blindness but it also includes people using monochrome monitors and handheld computers with grayscale screens.
* Using high contrast foreground/background colors benefits those with visual impairments, but most other users will also enjoy reading your site without squinting or experiencing eye fatigue.
* Avoiding flashing animations is necessary because animations that flash at frequencies between 2Hz end 55Hz can trigger seizures in individuals who are susceptible. Flashing animations, however, additionally tend to annoy or distract users without seizure disorders.
* Using relative rather than absolute units (e.g., percentages not pixels) ensures that content fits well regardless of resolution. Users with and without disabilities have an ever-increasing choice of resolution settings with modern computer equipment. Content should be designed to scale reliably, regardless of users' display devices or settings.
* Clarifying natural language usage (i.e., specifying whether the language of your content is English, Spanish, or some other language) allows supporting screen readers to automatically use the appropriate language engine to synthetically read the content. This, of course, benefits screen reader users such as people with blindness or reading disabilities. However, it also allows search engines to more accurately index your content by language.
* Providing a clear, simple design, including a consistent and intuitive navigational mechanism, benefits a variety of users with disabilities, but the result of doing so is a website where users can easily and efficiently find the information they're looking for. Clearly, this is a benefit to all users.
As web accessibility advocates continue to work toward educating and advocating for an accessible Web, the fact that universal web design is beneficial for all users can support and strengthen our web accessibility message. This presentation will include a detailed examination of the benefits described above, and will include demonstrations of how web sites are rendered using a variety of input and output technologies.
References
Center for Universal Design (nd). What is universal design? Retrieved September 24, 2004, from http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/univ_design/ud.htm
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