Section 1.1: Defining Accessibility

What is Accessibility?

Web sites are accessible when people with disabilities can access and use them as effectively as people without disabilities. (Slatin & Rush, 2003). Accessibility in many cases is described as removing barriers to the use of Web sites for individuals with disabilities.

This is a basic definition of a very complex topic that will be explored throughout these lessons. If you are interested in more definitions to describe accessibility, more information can be found at Additional Definitions of Accessibility.

User Experience

Here is an example of how a user who is blind may hear a table on a Web site. In this example, the user would be using specific keyboard strokes to read a particular row in the table. The audio clip uses a screen reader called JAWS.

Listen to JAWS read a data table with table-navigation keys.

JAWS transcript follows:
Table with four columns and five rows.
Summary: September tenth through September nineteenth
Blindness and Visual Impairments.
Date.
September tenth. Row two.
September twelfth. Row three.
Topic. Equivalent alternatives. Column two.
Reading. Maximum Accessibility, Chs. seven and nine; checkpoints and standards addressed in these chapters. Column three.
What's due. Place completed alt text exercises in teacher folder. Column four.

To compare what the table looks like with what it sounds like, view the table and play the audio clip again. Does the table look the way you expected after listening to it? View Table