In article <cohduf$r90$1@godfrey.mcc.ac.uk>,
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@schestowitz.com> wrote:
> Barbara de Zoete wrote:
>
> > [F'up set to ciwas-d]
> >
> > I am getting more and more confused as to the meaning of the words
> > 'accessibility' and 'usability' *in the context of the world wide web*.
> > What do these two words mean? How do they differ from one another? Where
> > does the meaning overlap, if it does? Where do they perhaps conflict with
> > one another, if they do?
> >
> > Can anyone please explain to someone who is not native speaking, nor
> > fluent in English?
>
> Accessibility is concerned with design that accommodates the need of
> disabled people (usually). For example, if you are near-sighted or blind
> (and hence _listen_ to Web pages), you want the page to have properties
> that make it friendly to you.
To me that's just a subset of 'accessibility". When content is Flash- or
javascript- or CSS-dependant, it is inaccessible to browsing
environments that don't handle Flash or javascript or CSS. Equally, when
content is sight-dependant (like an image without a useful ALT
attribute), it is not accessible to people who can't see (and to
spiders).
W3C's WAI seems to have decided to use "accessibility" to only concern
"people with disabilities" See <http://w3.org/WAI/>. While accessibility
issues to such groups are certainly worth considering when designing for
the Web, to me this is a too narrow view. It seems to me that very
narrowness even leads to design mistakes, like offering 'text-only'
versions of Web sites, instead of making 1 single Website that is
accessible to all.
> Accessibility is a subset of usability, I suppose. It is one aspect that
> makes a page easier to _use_, by all audiences.
I consider usability to come after accessibility. Something that is not
accessible is not useable, but something that is accessible can be
unuseable still.
> This leads to the
> definition of 'usability'. Usability can be explained in terms of ease of
> navigation (How do I get to...), good context (where am I inside the Web
> site?), etc.
Agreed.
--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/%7Etekelenb/>
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