Making the Internet accessible for people with cognitive and communication Impairments

Abstract

SUMMARYThis paper presents some of the work of the EU WWAAC project (World Wide Augmentative and Alternative Communication), which aims to make the electronic highway more accessible to people with cognitive and communication impairments, in particular those using symbols instead of text to communicate. Few specific guidelines are available to make sites truly accessible and usable for these user groups. We propose that guidelines are required for two purposes: to design standard Web pages for use by the general public, including a wide range of older people and people with disabilities, and also to design Web pages specifically for particular impairment groups, e.g. for symbol users in their personal, educational and employment activities. Not only should the guidelines be relevant to particular user groups, they must also be • accessible-that Web developers can easily find the most relevant guidelines, and• usable-that Web developers can easily put those guidelines into practice.

Learning from Internet Requirements of People with Communication Needs

“…This valuable and unique insight into the needs of people with complex communication needs should provide guidance for all Web content and browser developers through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [9,14,15]. Whilst it will not be possible to provide general guidelines that encompass all disability groups in the most optimal way, it is a desirable objective to try and maximise the numbers and range of users that can access Web sites for use by the general public.…”

Taking control of web browsing

“…There can be so much complexity, in fact, that it interferes with the ability of people to comprehend the page (Chadwick-Dias et al 2003, Poulson andNicolle 2004). Some users have difficulty understanding page layouts and navigation, resulting in problems interpreting multi-column layouts and multiple selection options.…”

Intelligent Interfaces to Empower People with Disabilities

“…In experiments, we saw a significant reduction in the number of commands needed on average to select a link, which greatly improved the rate of communication. Guidelines for accessible web pages, such as developed by the European project on world-wide augmentative and alternative communication [83], may help encourage web developers to design pages that are easily convertible by web mediators.…”

“…102]. Paradigms have been formulated that provide theoretical frameworks for the principles, assumptions, and practices of accessible and universal design [95,83]. human-centered computing has become an important research area in computer science [77].…”