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One world, one web ... but great diversity

Published: 21 April 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The mantra "One World, One Web" has a strong appeal to Web developers. They think of it as a design philosophy based on use of internationally agreed open standards for providing universal access to networked resources and services available on the World Wide Web. But does the available evidence show that practices match this philosophy? How would such an approach work in a Web 2.0 environment in which users may be authors of content?
This paper reviews the limitations of the dependence on a single WAI model and WCAG 1.0 guidelines. It describes a holistic approach to Web accessibility that has been discussed previously. There are additional complexities of accessibility in a Web 2.0 environment, in which not only can readers be creators of Web resources in a variety of formats, but also content can be surfaced in a variety of ways, addressed in this paper. The authors describe how the holistic model, initially developed to support the development of accessible e-learning in a Web 2.0 context, is well-suited for a Web 2.0 environment.
The paper provides a case study to illustrate how this holistic approach can be applied in the development of Web resources for users with learning difficulties. The paper concludes by arguing that future work to enhance the accessibility of Web services should focus on the development and commissioning processes rather than continue the current narrow emphasis on the compliance with universal accessibility guidelines of the digital resources themselves, independently of the context of their use.
Finally, the paper refers to two new developments that support the wider focus, providing for individual user-centred accessibility with descriptions of resources and components enabling adaptation of resources to individual needs and preferences.

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cover image ACM Conferences
W4A '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A)
April 2008
207 pages
ISBN:9781605581538
DOI:10.1145/1368044
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]

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Published: 21 April 2008

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Author Tags

  1. AccessforAll
  2. WAI
  3. WCAG
  4. guidelines
  5. metadata
  6. methodologies
  7. people with disabilities
  8. web accessibility

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W4A '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 12 of 29 submissions, 41%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

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  • (2017)Considerations for Implementing a Holistic Organisational Approach to AccessibilityProceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference10.1145/3058555.3058571(1-4)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2017
  • (2015)Blind Students' Challenges in Social Media CommunicationInternational Journal of Online Pedagogy and Course Design10.4018/ijopcd.20150101055:1(58-73)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2015
  • (2011)Development and trial of an educational tool to support the accessibility evaluation processProceedings of the International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility10.1145/1969289.1969293(1-10)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2011
  • (2010)An educational tool to support the accessibility evaluation processProceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)10.1145/1805986.1806003(1-4)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2010
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  • (2009)Accessibility of Registration Mechanisms in Social Networking SitesProceedings of the 3d International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing: Held as Part of HCI International 200910.1007/978-3-642-02774-1_9(82-90)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2009
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