Re: Web accessibility versus general accessibility standards

Good thoughts, Edward—this describes a situation very much similar to the
games industry and how they have been working over the past few years to
help make interactivity more accessible through controllers,
visual configurations, adjustable difficulty levels, etc. I believe much
could be gleaned from looking to the games industry and for web
interactivity to follow suit.

Thank you,

Russell Campbell

On Sun, 19 Sept 2021 at 17:02, Edward Chalk <edwardchalk@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Just some thoughts, if I may :-)
>
> General accessibility standards imply that the goods/services should be
> usable by people with disabilities as well as by full-functioning people.
> For example, we may provide a wheelchair ramp into a building so that the
> building is accessible both to people who require wheelchairs in order to
> be mobile, as well as to people who walk. So when we talk about Internet
> accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities, we could mean the
> same thing. In other words, we could mean that a person with a cognitive
> disability should be able to use a website, as well as a person who does
> not have a cognitive disability.
>
> However, it may be worthwhile considering that we are potentially talking
> about two sorts of websites. Originally, a website was nothing more than an
> online way of representing text and / or images, and some websites still
> operate on that basis. For these types of websites, the analogy to the
> wheelchair ramp is correct. Different to this is the modern trend where a
> website is an intelligent agent that proactively interacts with the user.
> Here, the website is expected to engage and interact with the user in the
> same way as a person (i.e. the web site meets the Turing Test
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test> to some extent). In this
> paradigm, the website becomes an active agent and not just a passive body
> of knowledge.
>
> For an active-agent type website, the question of accessibility seems to
> be more: Can the intelligent-agent interact with a user who has a cognitive
> disability, on their own terms?
>
> Subsequently, it may not be altogether clear that applying a universal
> standard for the accessibility of goods/services to the accessibility of
> information systems, such as the Internet, may lead to quite the right
> outcomes and conclusions, since the accessibility of an intelligent-agent
> that is implemented through an information system, does not mean the same
> thing as enhanced passive accessibility that is relevant to general goods
> and services.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Edward
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