Accessibility and Universal Design
Universal design refers to the recognition that design decisions should be made while keeping in mind the largest potential audience or user community, including people with disabilities. The digital humanities community therefore needs to learn from the insights of disability studies (Williams, 2012).
Universal design, as described by Ronald Mace (North Carolina State University), who coined the term,
“describe[s] the concept of designing all products and the built environment to be aesthetic and usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life” (Ronald L. Mace, cited in (Williams, 2012)) .
It is important, however, not to reduce universal design with accessibility principles, and vice-versa. Accessibility emphasizes the removal of barriers, and to design systems to make them useable and useful to persons with disabilities, while universal design focuses on all users, including, of course, those with disabilities. Although accessible systems allow persons with a disability to better access systems and their environment, the resulting system may not be affordable or aesthetically pleasing, in spite of its benefits.
An example from a physical environment of the relationship between the two concepts is given in (Williams, 2012)), who describes sidewalk curb cuts as applying universal design principles. They were initially created to help people in wheelchairs to cross the street. However, it was soon realized that these curb cuts are useful also to others. For example, someone making a delivery with a dolly, or an airline passenger pulling luggage on wheels, or a parent pushing a child in a stroller. Analogous accessibility design choices are also made in digital environments.
There are several arguments that can be made in favour of universal design. For instance, accessibility in digital resources is often legally mandated, especially for resources developed with federal funding (for example, in the United States). Another argument is the ease in which resources and systems are developed. For some systems, such as web pages, there is no need to code the system twice. For example, web standards exist that allow developers to design resources ensure all users, regardless of disability. Additionally, universal design principles for digital resources imply that those resources will be compatible with multiple devices. E.g. systems designed for a desktop computer should also work on mobile devices. There is “significant overlap between making a website accessible for a mobile device and for people with disabilities” (Henry, “Web Content Accessibility”, cited in (Williams, 2012)). Therefore, the digital humanities must create resources that are compatible with an array of mobile devices to be accessible by diverse communities of users.
There is a compelling argument that removing barriers created through inaccessible design choices may contribute to increased education levels and higher income levels. Consequently, universal design principles should be embraced by the digital humanities community.
Open-source accessibility tools for content management systems reduce the need for developers to create and evaluate their own accessibility enhancements and would provide a more accessible interface to users. Content creators would be able to use accessibility evaluation functions to aid in incorporating accessible design choices during development, not as an afterthought or addition to an already existing project or site (Williams, 2012).
Format translation tools also have an important role in accessibility. For example, digital talking books consist of XML documents that are compatible with a large number of devices that audibly read documents. Metadata in the XML allows users to navigate between different sections in the document. Tools also allow RSS (RDF Site Summary) to be automatically converted into XML formats that work those devices, as will Braille output devices (Williams, 2012).
Another innovative approach to improve accessibility includes the availability of tools for crowdsourced captions, subtitles, and transcripts for deaf and hearing-impaired users. Crowdsourcing refers to online projects recruit enthusiasts internationally who wish to donate their time to a project of interest. Many projects in the digital humanities projects have attempted to use crowdsourcing for transcriptions of digital images of documents. Although amateur transcribers recruited by crowdsourcing frequently make many mistakes, digital files with recorded audio generally results in more accurate transcriptions (Williams, 2012).
If universal design principles are widely adopted by digital humanities scholars, as stated by George H. Williams, “…the digital humanities community itself will also benefit significantly as it rethinks its assumptions about how digital devices could and should work with and for people” (Williams, 2012).
Digital humanities researcher Matthew Kirschenbaum has emphasized that in new media studies, and, by implication, in digital humanities scholarship, the graphical user interface of a software system is too-readily accepted as the “ground truth”, or baseline, of the user’s experience (Williams, 2012). However, Kirschenbaum also argues against screen essentialism, the idea that the computer screen is the only medium through which users interact with computerized systems. Such screen essentialism minimizes the importance of other interfaces, some of which had been in existence before the screen became predominant, such as paper interfaces – admittedly a pre-screen technology. Such a bias towards screen interfaces inhibits full utilization by users with visual impairments. Such users, however, benefit from tactile interfaces, such as refreshable Braille devices, or audible screen-readers and digital books.
Other forms of “essentialism” that need to be critiqued are the keyboard and mouse paradigm. For example, speech recognition systems allow document composition without keyboard/mouse input. Touch screens, which are prevalent on mobile devices, also demonstrate possibilities outside the keyboard and mouse paradigm of interaction. The technologies just mentioned, beyond screen essentialism and even “keyboard/mouse essentialism”, are consonant with universal design principles, as they potentially empower users with disabilities, but are primarily used by non-disabled people. Consequently, project development should no longer assume that the “traditional” screen, keyboard, and mouse environment is the default. A stated by Williams, “[a]s we observe contemporary computing devices proliferate and diversify, we need to plan for a future in which our current digital resources continue to be not only useful but usable” (Williams, 2012).