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Web Accessibility and Guidelines

  • Chapter
Web Accessibility

Part of the book series: Human-Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

Access to, and movement around, complex online environments, of which the World Wide Web (Web) is the most popular example, has long been considered an important and major issue in the Web design and usability field. The commonly used slang phrase ‘surfing the Web’ implies rapid and free access, pointing to its importance among designers and users alike. It has also been long established that this potentially complex and difficult access is further complicated, and becomes neither rapid nor free, if the user is disabled. There are millions of people who have disabilities that affect their use of the Web. Web accessibility aims to help these people to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with, as well as contribute to, the Web, and thereby the society in general. This accessibility is, in part, facilitated by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) currently moving from version one to two. These guidelines are intended to encourage designers to make sure their sites conform to specifications, and in that conformance enable the assistive technologies of disabled users to better interact with the page content. In this way, it was hoped that accessibility could be supported. While this is in part true, guidelines do not solve all problems and the new WCAG version two guidelines are surrounded by controversy and intrigue. This chapter aims to establish the published literature related to Web accessibility and Web accessibility guidelines, and discuss limitations of the current guidelines and future directions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    WAI, http://www.w3.org/WAI/

  2. 2.

    WCAG 2.0, http://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2-req/

  3. 3.

    Evaluation Tools, http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html

  4. 4.

    Device Independence Activity, http://www.w3.org/2001/di/

  5. 5.

    Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity, http://www.w3.org/2007/uwa/

  6. 6.

    RDF, http://www.w3.org/RDF/

  7. 7.

    Web Interaction Activity, http://www.w3.org/Interaction/

  8. 8.

    Multimodal Interaction Group, http://www.w3.org/2002/mmi/

  9. 9.

    What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228

  10. 10.

    Google Portal, http://www.google.com/ig

  11. 11.

    Folksonomy, http://del.icio.us/tag/folksonomy

  12. 12.

    Wikis, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki (Zhang 2006)

  13. 13.

    WAI Education and Outreach, http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/

  14. 14.

    Mobile Web Initiative, http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/

  15. 15.

    Amazon, http://www.amazon.co.uk/

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  1. Human Centred Web, School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Simon Harper

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  1. Simon Harper
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© 2008 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Harper, S., Yesilada, Y. (2008). Web Accessibility and Guidelines. In: Harper, S., Yesilada, Y. (eds) Web Accessibility. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-050-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-050-6_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84800-049-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84800-050-6

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