This year, we’ve seen a growing prominence of discussions about the idea of developing a resource providing access to trusted information on web and ICT accessibility – an accessibility Body of Knowledge. It would be hard to defend the idea that accessibility knowledge should remain a specialism, held only be a chosen few and made available to others only at great cost, going against the very objective of supporting inclusion that we surely all support. Instead, there’s an obvious attraction for accessibility specialists and those less familiar with accessibility theory and practice to be able to refer to and use a resource that provides authoritative information on accessibility, from development techniques to assistive technology performance and support to legislative requirements to statistics on return-on-investment.
April 15, 2012
Building an Accessibility Body of Knowledge
Posted by David Sloan under Accessibility and Usability | Tags: a11ybok, communication, eaccess+, education, research, w4a12 |[4] Comments
May 31, 2010
The role of accessibility in the usability profession today – and tomorrow
Posted by David Sloan under Accessibility and Usability | Tags: accessibility, advocacy, communication, conference, HCI, ICT, innovation, older people, pragmatism, upa2010, usability |[2] Comments
I had the honour of taking part in a panel session discussing How Does Accessibility Fit into Today’s Usability Practice? at the Usability Professionals’ Association Conference (UPA 2010) in Munich last week. The session was organised by Shawn Henry of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and provided an opportunity to debate the challenges of promoting and supporting accessible ICT design within a wider usability context. A number of interesting discussion points emerged – here are my reflections on the panel session.
