Article

The national accessibility portal: an accessible information sharing portal for the South African disability sector

Authors:

I. ViviersAuthors Info & Claims

W4A '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)

Pages 44 - 53

https://doi.org/10.1145/1243441.1243456

Published: 07 May 2007 Publication History

Abstract

The National Accessibility Portal initiative is a large initiative aimed at improving the quality of life of people living with disabilities in South Africa. The initiative has several functional components, including the National Accessibility Portal, National Accessibility Portal Centers, research into developing localised client side assistive technologies and devices, advocacy as well as the development of a methodology allowing for replication in other developing countries with similar needs.

The focus of this paper is on the research and development of the portal in the bigger National Accessibility Portal initiative.

The portal's differentiating elements measured against other content portals is the ability to provide a configurable platform (based on the user's profile) for information sharing and communication in an accessible and usable fashion within the constraints of today's technologies, in the user's language of choice and in the most cost effective and sustainable fashion.

In this paper we describe the process involved in developing version 1.0 of the National Accessibility Portal; from gathering user requirements, addressing the issue of multilingualism, accessibility and usability challenges. We present initial user feedback comments and highlight ongoing challenges. In addition we present the technology stack and implemented functionality.

References

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National Accessibility Portal Initiative. http://www.napsa.org.za. Accessed April 16, 2007.

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R. Alberts, A. J. van der Merwe, and H. Pretorius. Using quality requirements to systematically develop a National Accessibility Portal. In A. Jordaan, editor, Proceedings of the International Science and Technology Conference. Vaal University of Technology, South Africa, November 2006.

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Statistics South Africa, Census 2001. Primary tables South Africa. Census '96 and 2001 compared. Report No. 03/02/04 (2001). http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/c2001primtables.asp, 2004. Accessed April 16, 2007.

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D. Sloan, A. Heath, F. Hamilton, B. Kelly, H. Petrie, and L. Phipps. Contextual Web Accessibility - Maximizing the benefit of Accessibility Guidelines. In Proceedings of the 2006 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A): Building a mobile web: rediscovering accessibility?, volume 134 of ACM International Conference proceedings, pages 121--131. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, May 2006. ISBN:1-59593-281-X.

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J. T. Richards and V. L. Hanson. Web Accessibility: A broader view. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on World Wide Web, pages 72--79. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, May 2004. ISBN:1-58113-844-X.

Digital Library

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UTF-8. http://www.utf-8.com/. Accessed April 16, 2007.

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W. Chisholm, G. Vanderheiden, and I. Jacobs. Web content accessibility guidelines 1.0. http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/, May 1999. Accessed April 16, 2007.

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Cited By

Kahlon NSingh W(2021)Machine translation from text to sign language: a systematic reviewUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-021-00823-1Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-021-00823-1
Greeff MCoetzee LPistorius MBotha RCilliers C(2008)Usability evaluation of the South African National Accessibility Portal interactive voice response systemProceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology10.1145/1456659.1456669(76-85)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1456659.1456669

Index Terms

The national accessibility portal: an accessible information sharing portal for the South African disability sector
1. Information systems
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Assistive technologies
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

W4A '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)

May 2007

179 pages

ISBN:1595935908

DOI:10.1145/1243441

Conference Chairs:
Simon Harper
University of Manchester, UK
,
Yeliz Yesilada
University of Manchester, UK

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web
HA&AC: IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center
Zakon Group
SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing
Mozilla Foundation

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 May 2007

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W4A '07 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 27 submissions, 41%;

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Cited By

Kahlon NSingh W(2021)Machine translation from text to sign language: a systematic reviewUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-021-00823-1Online publication date: 3-Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-021-00823-1
Greeff MCoetzee LPistorius MBotha RCilliers C(2008)Usability evaluation of the South African National Accessibility Portal interactive voice response systemProceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology10.1145/1456659.1456669(76-85)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1456659.1456669

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