Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product (e.g., device, service, environment) is accessible by as many people as possible, and the ventures to produce accessible products and services. Accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities and their right of access to entities, often through use of assistive technology.
#11901
Understanding the Tradeoffs: A Case Study of the University of Washington Homepage 
Good web development requires knowing when and what tradeoffs should be made to best fulfill the needs of a broad audience. This article uses the University of Washington homepage to help you understand these tradeoffs.
Prosser, Jaime. EServer (2001). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards
#31837
Universal Design – The Time is Now
The time for universal design is now because, as the Designing for the 21st Century III Conference website states “This is an extraordinary moment. We are more diverse now in ability and age than ever before. It is time for design to catch up. There is an urgent need to exchange ideas about the design of places, things, information, policies and programs that demonstrate the power of design to shape a 21st century world that works for all of us.”
Tauke, Beth. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#22976
Universal Design and Disability Access to the Web
As the importance of the Internet increases, so does the need to make its content available to larger, more diverse audiences. These audiences use a variety of technologies to access the Web, ranging from traditional browsers on desktop computers to portable, hand-held devices, cell phones and hands-free devices. The need to accommodate these technologies through more universal Web design strategies grows with every new technology which is introduced. Web developers who ignore the emerging trend toward multiple-environment Internet access will be left to lament their inability to reach important segments of the population.
Bohman, Paul. WebAIM (2000). Design>Web Design>Accessibility
#18608
Universal Design Custom Bibliography Tool
A bibliography of writings about universal design.
University of Wisconsin. Resources>Bibliographies>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#31789
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach that addresses and redresses the primary barrier to making expert learners of all students: inflexible, one-size-fits-all curricula that raise unintentional barriers to learning. Learners with disabilities are most vulnerable to such barriers, but many students without disabilities also find that curricula are poorly designed to meet their learning needs.
CAST (2008). Books>Education>Accessibility
#21695
Universal Design in Education: What Is It?
Universal design in education (UDE) means that physical, social, and learning environments are designed so that individuals with a wide range of abilities can have meaningful access and participation in general education. Universal design in education is built in and involves flexibility of materials, strategies, approaches, and technology. Universal design should guide developers, educators, users, and others in developing and implementing environments that support diverse users, regardless of their abilities.
ALLTech (2004). Articles>Accessibility>Education>Universal Usability
#18609
Universal Design Information Resources
The following are lists of Web sites that Trace Center staff have found particularly useful. The resources listed in turn contain links to many other excellent sites.
University of Wisconsin. Resources>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#18600
Universal Design Interface Standards
Essential to the ability of people to come up to universally designed products and know how to operate them is the existence of interface standards. Work is currently under way in a number of areas to ensure that people: 1. Know what to do to operate products they encounter; 2. Are able to connect any assistive technologies they may have with them to the products they encounter.
University of Wisconsin. Design>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#18601
Universal Design Research Project
The Universal Design Research Project is a three year study funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. This project was designed to gain an understanding of why and how companies adopt universal design, and what factors are the most important in making this decision. In addition, factors which discourage or impede the adoption and successful practice of universal design are also being identified. A second objective is to determine what those outside of companies can do to support universal design within the companies.
University of Wisconsin. Organizations>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#28246
An early definition of universal usability.
Schneiderman, Ben. Communications of the ACM (2000). Articles>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#18435
Universalusability.org provides the definition and foundation for the topic of universal usability in addition to introducing researchers and practitioners to five perspectives on universal usability. Universal usability involves understanding how users attempt to accomplish tasks using a variety of technologies in different organizational and social contexts. And researchers and practitioners have a wide range of approaches and methods available to apply to this range of user-system interactions.
Universal Usability. Organizations>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#14235
The goal of universal access to information and communications services is compelling. Enthusiastic networking innovators, business leaders, and government policy makers see opportunities and benefits from widespread usage. But even if they succeed and the economies of scale bring low costs, computing researchers will still have much work to do. They will have to deal with the difficult question: How can information and communications services be made usable for every citizen? Designing for experienced frequent users is difficult enough, but designing for a broad audience of unskilled users is a far greater challenge. Scaling up from a listserv for 100 software engineers to 100,000 schoolteachers to 100,000,000 registered voters will take inspiration and perspiration.
Shneiderman, Ben. Universal Usability (2000). Books>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#18448
Universal Usability Guidelines for Users with Slow Connections
Since the beginning of 'age of the Internet', the load time of Web pages has been the major concern among the designers and the users. Analysis of traffic patterns of the web sites has shown how the users get frustrated about slowness of the connection. WWW, which stands for 'World Wide Web', has been pronounced as 'World Wide Wait' by many users. Web designers often want to use graphics, animation, and even sound and video to represent or enhance web site content. However, these can generate longer waiting times unless the users have a high speed connection and research shows that web users don't like to wait. Tenth Georgia Tech GVU WWW Survey (1998) showed that slow ads, speed of the Internet and graphics are among the problems that the users complained most.
Ayan, Necip Fazil. Universal Usability (2001). Design>Usability>Accessibility>Bandwidth
#18437
Universal Usability in Practice
The goal of universal usability is to enable the widest range of users to benefit from web services. This website contains recommendations and information resources for web developers who wish to accommodate users with slow modems, small screens, text-only, and wireless devices. It deals with content design issues such as translation to other languages, plus access for novice, low educated and low motivated users, children and elders. The website also covers design guidance for blind, deaf, cognitively impaired, and physically disabled users. Each article has practical guidelines, web site examples, links to organizations, and a bibliography.
Ceaparu, Irina and Dina Demner. Universal Usability. Resources>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#18443
Universal Usability Web Design Guidelines for the Elderly (Age 65 and Older)
The use of computers in everyday life, particularly the Internet, is growing at an astonishing rate. The idea of universal usability has been put forward to address the problems of building 'An Information Society for All'. Ben Shneiderman proposed three challenges to attain universal usability for Web-based and other services: technology variety, user diversity, and gaps in knowledge. While a variety of groups and organizations are working on hardware and software accessibility, how to design an easy-to-use interface that accommodates all user communities remains a major task. On the other hand, the population of older people is increasing at an extraordinary rate. People 45 years and older will soon make up more than half the adult population, and people 85 years and older are the fastest growing age group. While technology is rapidly being integrated into most aspects of life, changing the nature of work, the form and scope of personal communication, education, health care delivery, and home, older people are highly likely to be active users of technology.
Zhao, Haixia. Universal Usability (2001). Design>Usability>Accessibility>Elderly
#18436
Universal Usability: Introduction and Definition
The goal of universal access to information and communications services is compelling. Enthusiastic networking innovators, business leaders, and government policy makers see opportunities and benefits from widespread usage. But even if they succeed and the economies of scale bring low costs, computing researchers will still have much work to do. They will have to deal with the difficult question: How can information and communications services be made usable for every citizen? Designing for experienced frequent users is difficult enough, but designing for a broad audience of unskilled users is a far greater challenge. Scaling up from a listserv for 100 software engineers to 100,000 schoolteachers to 100,000,000 registered voters will take inspiration and perspiration.
Shneiderman, Ben. Universal Usability. Articles>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#22972
University Web Accessibility Policies: A Bridge Not Quite Far Enough
Most university Web accessibility policies fall short of achieving their purpose. The Web sites of these universities often fail to meet minimum Web accessibility standards. Part of the problem lies with the policies themselves. Many of them fail to delineate a specific technical standard, fail to indicate whether compliance with the policy is required, fail to indicate a timeline or deadline for compliance, fail to define a system for evaluating or monitoring compliance, and fail to enumerate any consequences for failure to comply.
Bohman, Paul. WebAIM (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Policies and Procedures
#19241
Usability and Accessibility of PDAs in Education
This report is targeted towards students, teachers and educational technology specialists in order to help them understand the practical issues of Personal Digital Assistants, also known as Palmtops or Handheld PCs.
Rainger, Peter. TechDis (2002). Articles>Education>Accessibility>Usability
#26789
Usability and Accessibility with AJAX
The Ajax express train rumbles on, threatening to crush anything in its path. Recent discussion has turned to those critical elements of good web development, usability and accessibility. Accessibility is a major issue with Ajax, mainly because anything that relies on JavaScript to function is inaccessible pretty much by default. There are two solutions: either provide a fall-back system where the site remains useful without its Ajax enhancements, or provide a whole separate interface that works without scripting.
Willison, Simon. SitePoint (2005). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Ajax
#26767
The number of older web users is growing at a dramatic rate. Find out how to make your website easy to use for this lucrative market.
Fidgeon, Tim. Webcredible (2006). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Elderly
#25689
On this site you'll find information, resources, and the latest news on web site usability and accessibility issues, with a healthy dose of web standards advocacy thrown in for good measure.
#19044
Usable Interactive Voice Response Applications
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) application is any telephone-based application which interactively takes input from callers and returns output in the form of a previously recorded human voice or other auditory information (Noonan). Cost and efficiency considerations means that IVR applications are fast becoming a common supplement, or indeed alternative, to direct contact with customer service representatives. The principles of User-Centred Design can be applied to make a more efficient and intuitive IVR applications. A solely auditory interface means that the user can hear only one thing at a time. The interface is sequential. With visual interfaces, like computer screens, it is possible to emphasise content through fonts or colour. The user can review any part of the screen at a glance. Therefore, the manner and order in which information is rendered on an IVR application is very important. The following are some guidelines for the design of an intuitive IVR application.
Gaine, Frank. Frontend Infocentre (2001). Articles>User Interface>Accessibility>Voice
#19494
Usable, Accessible Web Pages for Low Vision: Criteria for Designers 
This paper identifies challenges for design of web pages for low vision. It examines key usability considerations (subject, occasion, audience, and purpose) for defining content for web pages and emphasizes seven basic principles of universal design. SOAP for web pages is a model that web page developers can use to define content criteria for websites. The model emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to audience, needs, task, and requirements analysis. It discusses a user–centered approach (capture, specify, plan, realize, deliver) to usability testing. Additionally, this paper summarizes key findings from low vision research on type legibility. The paper concludes with design principles that can be derived from print–based studies (normal and subnormal vision) for developing accessible web pages.
Reece, Gloria A. STC Proceedings (2001). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Visual
#19218
The UsableNet (LIFT) On-line Web Accessibility Tool
TechDis and UsableNet are working together to bring you this FREE online web accessibility evaluation tool. The tool automates many of the 'Technical Accessibility' requirements for your web pages.
TechDis (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Software
#27719
The traditional way of implementing the HTML accesskey attribute using unique letters does not work. I propose always to use the first letter of the link name as access key. The first letter can be generated by code. We badly need are more accessible Internet.
Tverskov, Jesper. Smack the Mouse (2002). Design>Web Design>Accessibility
