Accessibility
Accessibility on the web means creating interfaces that don’t exclude those with disabilities. An example of disabilities that make browsing the web harder include blindness and deafness.
Why accessibility?
- Legal Aspects: 20% of people have a disability, this is one out of five people in America. In America, accessibility is FEDERAL LAW.
- Moral Aspects: Universal access and interoperability are what the web strives for. Corporate Social Responsibility is where many companies integrate certain aspects to their interfaces that may be concerns for their business operation or how interactive their design is.
- Business Aspects: Creating accessibility can avoid potential lawsuits as accessibility is federal law. It also makes goods and services more accessible to a broader number of consumers.
How do you make it accessible?
- Making an interface accessible to users with disabilities, examples of disabilities that impair web usage would be blindness or deafness.
- One way to accommodate deafness is to apply closed captioning to any video or audio.
- This article by Web Accessibility Initiatives explains more about disabilities and the importance of accessibility.
Openness
Openness in terms of the internet means creating online resources and sources that allow others to observe, critique, and collaborate using these sources without penalty. This allows more information to be shared!
Why Openness?
- Creating a more open online resource will force you to think more introspective and articulate why your actions are justified.
- Sharing with a broader community allows more users to validate or invalidate your decisions. This can help solve everyone’s problems and not just a few.
How do you make it open?
- An example of creating more open resources is through open-source programming. Open-source programming is a software program whose source code can be distributed and made available for use, modification, and distribution however other editors see fit.
