Reading card 4

accessibility

Reference

Brajnik, G., Yesilada, Y., & Harper, S. (n.d.). Guideline Aggregation : Web

Accessibility Evaluation for Older Users Categories and Subject

Descriptors. Interfaces, 127-135.

Summary statement

All accessibility guidelines must be met to gain compliance in order to achieve “universal accessibility”.

Key concepts

An accessibility barrier is any conditionthat makes it difficult for people to achieve

a goal when using the website in the specified context. A barrier can be

described in terms of:i) the user category involved, ii) the type of assistivetechnology being used,iii) the goal that is being hindered, iv) The features of the pages that raise the barrier, and v) further effects of the barrier on payoff functions.

Key arguments and relationships

Some barrier types are more reproducible than others. This is

probably due to interpretation and/or application of some barrier types being more difficult or more subjective than

others.

Key findings and contributions

Older users are a diverse group, often experiencing multiple functional limitations; therefore devising a universal strategy for improving

their Web experience is not a trivial task.

Ideas, observations and critiques

Which accessibility problems are identified and how their severity is

rated are two aspects of accessibility investigations that lack substantial

standardization, leading to low reproducibility of results.

General ideas

Ideally, a good method is a dependable tool that yields accurate

predictions of all the accessibility problems that may occur in a website.

Conclusion:

By evaluating accessibility must be taken into account all kind of possible

barriers. Disabilities, age- related specs., background, hardware, software, network speed etc.