Event-Driven Business Process Management
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Definition eAccessibility refers to the access of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by people with disabilities, with particular emphasis on the World Wide Web. It is the extent to which the use of an application or service is affected by the user’s particular functional limitations or abilities (permanent or temporary). eAccessibility can be considered as a fundamental prerequisite of usability.
Historical Background The percentage of disabled citizens has increased dramatically in the last century due to life condition improvements, higher life expectancy, and population aging. This trend is anticipated to further increase in the next decades. Traditional efforts to provide eAccessibility for users with disabilities were based on the adaptation of applications and services originally developed for able-bodied users. In the context of the Information Society, this raises the fundamental issue of granting to disabled citizens access to a variety of technologies that become progressively more entangled with all types of everyday activities. Early technical approaches to eAccessibility mainly focused on two directions. The first treats each application separately, and takes all the necessary implementation steps to arrive at an alternative accessible version (product-level adaptation). Practically, productlevel adaptation often implies redevelopment from scratch. The second approach ‘‘intervenes’’ at the level of the particular interactive application environment (e.g., MS-Windows) in order to provide appropriate software and hardware technology so as to make that environment #
2009 Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC
accessible through alternative means (environment-level adaptation). The latter option extends the scope of eAccessibility to cover potentially all applications running under the same interactive environment, rather than a single application, and is therefore acknowledged as a more promising strategy. The above approaches have given rise to several methods for addressing eAccessibility, including techniques for the configuration of input/output at the level of the user interface, and the provision of Assistive Technologies. Popular Assistive Technologies supporting eAccessibility include screen readers and Braille displays for blind users, screen magnifiers for users with low vision, alternative input and output devices for motor impaired users (e.g., adapted keyboards, mouse emulators, joystick, binary switches), specialized browsers (e.g., [10]), and text prediction systems (e.g., [4]). Assistive Technologies are legally defined in the US as ‘‘Any item, piece of equipment, or system, whether acquired commercially, modified, or customized, that is commonly used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities [15].’’ Despite progress, Assistive Technologies and dedicated design approaches have been criticized for their essentially reactive nature [13]. Although the ‘‘reactive’’ approach to eAccessibility may be the only viable solution in many
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