Accessibility is very personal – what works for one person may not work for another.  The “one size fits all” approach has been tried and although admirable in its intentions has often proved difficult to implement.

The W3C WCAG (World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Guidelines) v 1.0 tried a technical approach to accessibility by setting out a number of accessibility guidelines, which could be automatically tested by online validators such as Bobby. Whilst this automatic validation can validate the HTML code, many of guidelines require human input and common sense.  For example, whilst an automated accessibility validator can check that an image has an alt text tag, it cannot check that the tag actually makes sense.  People who don’t use images, such as those using mobile technologies or visually impaired people still need to know whether an image is important to the content or not.  An image with an alt tag of “image01.jpg” gives no information to website users, whilst an alt tag of “Photograph of Winston Churchill” would not only aid navigation through a web page, but it would also provide information that the image does not provide additional information to the text, so the user knows they are not missing out on anything.  As well as this, users could hover a mouse over the image to see the alt text.  This could be useful where an image doesn’t have a text caption underneath.

Difficulties with adhering to such guidelines and standards can cause barriers for people because content developers may then try to produce content to the lowest common denominator, i.e. text only.  Although text can be easily accessed by people using screen readers, it can be difficult for people with dyslexia to read and is visually unappealing.  So in this case, whilst the content is accessible for people using screen readers, it is less accessible for people with dyslexia.

Despite the drawbacks, this standardisation (“one size fits all”) approach is important.  Without a set of guidelines, developers may not know where to begin with accessibility and may not approach the basics in the same way, thereby reducing interoperability with assistive and other technologies.

One way to complement the standards approach is to produce alternative but equivalent versions of content.  For example, transcripts can be provided for podcasts, text heavy content can be offered as with animations or images or in simple language for people with learning disabilities or language learners.  This holistic approach has been proposed by Kelly, Phipps, and Howell in Implementing a Holistic Approach to e-Learning Accessibility.  This approach also takes student learning styles and pedagogy into account as well as technical and usablity issues.

Standards and guidelines are important but they need to be used with common sense and in combination with other approaches. Standards and guidelines can help with the physical presentation of the content, whilst holistic and other approaches can help the user to interact and use that content in the format best suited to their needs.