Web accessibility’s definition has evolved

Our current understandings of digital accessibility are shaped by the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative‘s evolving definition of web accessibility, which currently reads,

Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:

• perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web (Note: this is the original definition since Web 1.0)  
• contribute to the Web (Note: this was added post-Web 2.0).

W3C, Introduction To Web Accessibility (para. 8, notes added by the author)

This basic definition has been used as a frame of reference for web accessibility work for 20 plus years. It’s the basis for the internationally accepted Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, the Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust (POUR) Framework, and for our expanded notion of digital accessibility, which ports the W3C’s initial conception of web accessibility beyond the web and into all of our digital spaces from software applications to mobile devices to library self-checkout kiosks. There are three things about this definition that I want to draw your attention to.

1. This definition was first written for website developers. It was written plainly for developers to develop websites to do a thing; be navigable; be operable, etc. The people who the sites do these things for are in the definition but they don’t come first – the technology is literally put before the people.

Given the initial purpose and context for the definition, there is a logic to that, but this definition is now used to introduce millions of people who are not developers – who are not developing websites – to the importance of using digital accessibility practices to include people with disabilities in our digital commons, our learning environments and our economies.

Given the expanded significance this definition has taken on, it is time to put people with disabilities front and centre in our understanding of digital accessibility.

2. This definition is based on an independence paradigm. It’s subtle but this definition and much of the work that stems from it is based on the world view that the end game of web accessibility is enabling disabled technology users to work independently, read alone.

Again, given the initial purpose and context for the definition, enabling disabled technology users to independently use the web and now computer technology has been an important goal, (which by the way has seen very spotty success) but independent access is no longer an acceptable end game for our times.

We, people with disabilities, need to be able to collaborate and experience agency in social digital environments, and that needs clear articulation. Disabled folk are social beings too. Many assistive technologies have been designed for independent work and now, by design, run into problems with collaborative platform design. We need design and development solutions, and we need digital habit adaptations, neither of which will happen unless the need is made visible. Let’s get our need to connect into the definition.

3. Where’s our experience? Given that the technology industry is built around user experience, the goal for the disabled users’ experience of navigating and operating, etc. is missing from this definition of web accessibility.

I can tell you, when bare minimum access remains the goal-post for 20 plus years, many are operating frustratedly, navigating stiltedly, interacting in marginalized ways and contributing sub-optimally. It’s not good enough.

Transformative Digital Accessibility

We need the definition for digital accessibility to evolve again, and this time it needs to evolve more fundamentally. Imagine what might change if we imagine a definition that is based on the interdependence paradigm used by the Disability Justice movement. How might our digital practices and our technology development shift if the basic definition of digital accessibility clearly articulates that people with disabilities should be able to equitably and agentively participate in and contribute to community?

I would define the construct of transformative digital accessibility as having two necessary features.

First, it is an experience of technology where, people with disabilities can equitably and agentively use digital technologies to perceive, understand, navigate, engage in, and contribute to:

• digital information sharing
• curation, creation, and media sharing
• sociocultural experience sharing with others.

Second, it is a way of thinking about digital accessibility that encompasses both society’s day to day digital practices and choices, as well as the ways things in our digital environments are designed. We are all interconnected. We all have a role to play.

See the difference from the original? What do you think?

What most people don’t get about digital accessibility

The way digital accessibility is often portrayed, people understandably mistake it for a tech world issue, a problem that exists somewhere amidst the ones and zeros. Something that is someone in the tech department’s, or the compliance division’s problem.

In reality, digital accessibility is a visceral, sociocultural phenomenon; it’s what happens when people’s choices and actions relative to how we use technology play out in and on the bodies of other people, disabled people. It is defined by the intracorporeal sensory, cognitive and emotional experiences of people with disabilities; it is, by this definition, also defined by people’s sense of access, agency, inclusion and respect when engaging with others in the digital commons. This is where the meat and meaning of accessibility reside.