Tagged: standards

Web accessibility standards and disability: developing critical perspectives on accessibility


My new paper ‘Web accessibility standards and disability: developing critical perspectives on accessibility’ is now available as an ‘early online’ publication via the Journal of Disability and Rehabilitation. If you would like to read the article, but do not have access to the journal please get in touch with me directly, via selewthwaite [at] gmail .com, as I have 15 eprints to give away.

The paper will be published as part of a forthcoming Disability and Rehabilitation special issue focussed on universalism in design, edited by Rob Imrie. I will post the full details of the Special Issue when they become available. If you are interested this area, be sure to check out the Universalising Design project website, for events, research and news convened by Prof. Imrie and his team.

Abstract: Web accessibility standards and disability: developing critical perspectives on accessibility.

Purpose: Currently, dominant web accessibility standards do not respect disability as a complex and culturally contingent interaction; recognizing that disability is a variable, contrary and political power relation, rather than a biological limit. Against this background there is clear scope to broaden the ways in which accessibility standards are understood, developed and applied.
Methods: Commentary.
Results: The values that shape and are shaped by legislation promote universal, statistical and automated approaches to web accessibility. This results in web accessibility standards conveying powerful norms fixing the relationship between technology and disability, irrespective of geographical, social, technological or cultural diversity.
Conclusions: Web accessibility standards are designed to enact universal principles; however, they express partial and biopolitical understandings of the relation between disability and technology. These values can be limiting, and potentially counter-productive, for example, for the majority of disabled people in the “Global South” where different contexts constitute different disabilities and different experiences of web access. To create more robust, accessible outcomes for disabled people, research and standards practice should diversify to embrace more interactional accounts of disability in different settings.

Implications for Rehabilitation

  • Creating accessible experiences is an essential aspect of rehabilitation.
  • Web standards promote universal accessibility as a property of an online resource or service. This undervalues the importance of the user’s intentions, expertize, their context, and the complex social and cultural nature of disability.
  • Standardized, universal approaches to web accessibility may lead to counterproductive outcomes for disabled people whose impairments and circumstances do not meet Western disability and accessibility norms.
  • Accessible experiences for rehabilitation can be enhanced through an additional focus on holistic approaches to accessibility blending digital and physical solutions, the use of BS 8878 and mixed-method approaches to accessibility benchmarking.
  • Web standards and accessibility conformance should be considered together with user input and the recognition and development of local accessibility and rehabilitation expertize.

Keywords: accessibility, cultural norms, disability theory, WCAG, web standards.

Article: Why Accessibility Standards Need to Be Contextually Sensitive


Screenshot of Kelly, Hassell, Sloan, Lukeš, Draffan, and Lewthwaite, (July 2013) 'Bring Your Own Policy: Why Accessibility Standards Need to be Contextually Aware' Ariadne Issue 71.
Screenshot of Kelly, Hassell, Sloan, Lukeš, Draffan, and Lewthwaite, (July 2013) ‘Bring Your Own Policy: Why Accessibility Standards Need to be Contextually Aware’ Ariadne Issue 71.

Earlier this summer, a paper co-authored by Brian Kelly (@briankelly) David Sloan (@sloandr) Dominique Lukeš (@techczech) EA Draffan (@EADraffan) and myself (@slewth!) was published in issue 71 of Ariadne, the online quarterly publication for Information Professionals. ‘Bring Your Own Policy: Why Accessibility Standards Need to be Contextually Aware’ is open access.

In our paper, we argue that rather than having a universal standard for Web accessibility, Web accessibility practices and policies need to be sufficiently flexible to cater for the local context. The issue’s editorial describes the paper as follows:

Brian Kelly, Jonathan Hassell, David Sloan, Dominik Lukeš, E.A. Draffan and Sarah Lewthwaite advise Bring Your Own Policy: Why Accessibility Standards Need to Be Contextually Sensitive and argue that, rather than having a universal standard for Web accessibility, Web accessibility practices and policies need to be sufficiently flexible to cater for the local context. The authors explain that despite the increased pressures on conformance with Web accessibility guidelines, large-scale surveys have shown that they have had relatively little impact. Having reviewed previous critiques, they examine the code of practice BS 8878. They argue for a wider application than just to Web content, and that an alternative strategy could be adopted which would employ measures that are more context-sensitive. The authors point out that little attention has been paid to the principles underlying Global Accessibility Standards and that in non-Western environments may even prove to be counter-productive. They highlight the alternative of more evidence-based standards and examine their disadvantages. Having used the example of simple language to illustrate the difficulties, the authors offer another example in the provision of accessibility support to publicly available video material. They argue that standardisation of the deployment of Web products is more important that the conformance of the products themselves. The authors summarise the aims of BS 8878. They explain the scope of the framework that it adds to WCAG 2.0 and how it encourages Web site designers to think more strategically about all accessibility decisions surrounding their product. They conclude that globalisation is not limited to users: owners of sites do not wish to be constrained in their choice of international suppliers and products, but the latter are by no means standardised globally – but the benefits of an international standard are enormous.

If you’d like more information, Brian Kelly supplies a thorough overview of the paper and its genealogy on the UK Web Focus blog, highlighting the peer-reviewed papers that led to this publication and outlining each author’s contribution. I’m continuing to focus on this area (see forthcoming publications), so any thoughts on the article are very welcome. Comment below, or email me directly.