Course:LIBR559A/Elcessor, E. (2010)

Citation

Ellcessor, E. (2010). Bridging disability divides: A critical history of web content accessibility through 2001. Information, Communication & Society, 13(3), 289-308.

Annotation

Summary

Elcessor takes a universal design approach to disability. First, she begins by explaining the main approaches that lead to the formation of this approach, beginning with the principle of accessibility and its focus on accommodating to people’s needs, then moving on to universal design and usability focusing on taking variations of human needs and preferences into account. She quotes the original article introducing universal design where Brummel defined the principle as “a call for the development of information systems flexible enough to accommodate the needs of the broadest range of users of computers and telecommunications equipment, regardless of age or disability” Then she introduces universal usability as the attempt to unify the concepts of accessibility and usability and defines it as ‘a focus on designing products so they are usable by the widest range of people operating in the widest range of situations as is commercially practical.’

Then, she discusses ways that these approaches have been applied to reform society and disability. Through her examples, she highlights the pros and cons of the universal design approach. She mentions the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which attempts to take into account the “variability of bodily abilities as well as a variety of usage circumstances”. She points out that the creators of the WCAG are proponents of universal design/usability and they incorporated the concept into the philosophy and design of their guidelines. However, although it currently is included in their mission, they have yet to fully apply the principle to their practical guidelines. To contrast, she then mentions the creators of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)’s section 508, who were not as much in favor of universal design and usability. They did not incorporate it into their regulations due to its lack of enforceability. They rejected universal design “out of concern for the same principles of variation”. Where the creators of the WCAG attempted to include a range of differences in needs, the Section 508 creators recognized that variations could be so extreme and incompatible as to be impossible to legislate”. As a proponent of universal design, she concludes that we should change our design perspectives from accessibility to integration and variation.

Critique

This article gives a really good overview of the many approaches to designing for people with disabilities. The point of the article is that we should “shift perspectives on accessibility from accommodation to variation and integration” or in other words “disability studies should work towards ‘a theory of complex embodiment that values disability as a form of human variation’”. Elcessor makes this statement at the end of the article but does not develop on how it would be achieved. Like the creators of the WCAG and the ADA’s Section 508, she advocates for the ideal of universal designs and usability but she is unable to describe how they should be applied. In other words, she gives no clear recommendations or directions on how to apply her approach to create progressive models and designs for the future.

Page author: Idil Tahirgil