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Accommodation through Design:

A review of texts: A few success stories

A more refreshing and informative approach to design and usability through good design is found in William Sanborn Pfeiffer's Technical Communication: A Practical Approach in which we find the author getting us closer to a fuller exploration of these issues. Specifically, in his chapter titled "Web Pages and Writing for the Web," Pfeiffer spends a brief paragraph on the topic, a paragraph that addresses a variety of obstacles for access: "Usability and accessibility issues are especially important because you must provide equal access to all of your users, including those with limited access or disabilities. For instance, many sites provide text equivalents for graphic content that may not be viewable on the site by all its users. You will also have to consider the technological limitations of some computer systems…. Make a list of all important contextual issues to use as a guide when you are developing content, graphics, and other aspects of your Web site" (407).

Later in the same chapter, however, he more pointedly addresses utility and access for disabled users: "Usability should be considered throughout the development process, not just at the end. Simply put, it means you must focus on the needs and expectations of your audience. When you make decisions on navigation, graphics, content chunks, site structure, and interface layout, always make choices that demonstrate good usability" (424). Such advice, though general, is sound, but what is most striking is his inclusion of "Accessibility Guidelines" in the pages that follow wherein he instructs students using the text to consider Section 508 and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. To do so, Pfeiffer includes for students the Web addresses for these standards as well as a sixteen-point summary of Section 508.

Technical Communication (6th edition). In a chapter titled "Ensuring Usability," Burnett summarizes the various technologies users may employ to address problems with mobility, with vision, with hearing, and with cognition [link to our own review of the types of disability]. For example, she identifies assistive technologies for low-vision or blind readers including scanning reading systems (that are ultimately read to a person using a speech synthesizer, screen readers, screen magnifiers, and dynamic or refreshable Braille. She even prompts students to consider a question: "Why are accessibility principles so important to Web-based products?" She then offers the following: "Technical communicators are increasingly involved in the design of Web sites and Web-based applications...; thus, they must be aware of all aspects of usability, including accessibility. In addition, recent regulations pertaining to disability and information technologies require that certain Web sites, software, and other communication products meet accessibility standards. Most important, meeting the needs of people who use information technologies is ethically responsible as well as practical and profitable" (335).

For the next several pages of her text, Burnett develops the discussion of accessibility and asks students to synthesize, to evaluate, and to apply what they have learned to two different scenarios. (It should be noted here that the scenarios she includes address mobility concerns rather than visual impairments or blindness; however, her discussion of disabilities as a whole has been far more extensive than those texts described above.) Additionally, she includes in this chapter supplemental Web site that aims to develop further the topic the universal design. (Click here to view this supplemental site. Select Chapter 9: Ensuring Usability and then select Web Links under the Chapter Resources menu.)