Disability and Discourses of Web Accessibility

Submitted by mlb78 on Fri, 09/16/2016 - 17:21
TitleDisability and Discourses of Web Accessibility
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2009
AuthorsAdam, Alison, and Kreps, David
JournalInformation, communication & society
Volume12
Issue7
Pagination1041-1058
AbstractMuch of the World Wide Web remains inaccessible or difficult to access by people across a spectrum of disabilities and this may have serious implications for the potential use of the web for increasing social inclusion. We argue that the complexities of web accessibility are best analysed against a set of relevant discourses and that part of the reason for the obduracy of web inaccessibility lies in crucial gaps in engagement of these discourses, so that there is no clear avenue through which disabled people can engage effectively with the web accessibility issue to ensure their rights are met. We characterize the relevant discourses in terms of the digital divide discourse, the social construction of disability discourse, focusing on the historical relationship between disability and technology, the legal discourse where we briefly describe the burdens which disability discrimination demands of those who design websites and the web accessibility discourse, including a discussion of the development of web accessibility standards. We argue that there are crucial gaps in engagement of these discourses, signalling that important groups are not engaged with the dominant policy making agenda. Notably disability activists are not included in the standard making agenda of the web accessibility movement. Unless ways of including such groups can be found, we argue that the current state of web accessibility and hence the potential for social inclusion to be increased is unlikely to be ameliorated.
NotesThis article argued that the reason why it was difficult to improve web accessibility lied in a series of discourses, including the digital divide discourse, the social construction of disability discourse and the legal discourse. They may bring about gaps of engagement among people, and in particular, important relevant groups were not sufficiently engaged with principle policy making. Therefore, it should be of significance to include such key groups into the whole web accessibility agenda, so that more societal participation could be expected in improving web accessibility activities.
DOI10.1080/13691180802552940