A set of best practices that must be followed by designers and developers when implementing software solutions (e.g., Web site) that will help on providing accessible information. By being guidelines, it should not be assumed that content is accessible just by following them.
Published in Chapter:
A Service Oriented Ontological Framework for the Semantic Validation of Web Accessibility
Rui Lopes (University of Lisbon, Portugal), Konstantinos Votis (Pattern Recognition Laboratory, University of Patras and Informatics and Telematics Institute, CERTH, Greece), Luís Carriço (University of Lisbon, Portugal), and Spiridon Likothanassis (Pattern Recognition Laboratory, University of Patras, Greece)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 19
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-650-1.ch003
Abstract
The Web serves as the principal mediator for information sharing and communication on a worldwide scale. Its highly decentralized nature affords a scale free growth, where each endpoint (i.e., Web site) is created and maintained independently. Web designers and developers have the onus of making sure that users can interact without accessibility problems. However, coping with users with disabilities poses challenges on how to ensure that a Web site is accessible for any kind of user. When (and if) this is done, designers and developers do it in a post-hoc way, (i.e., verify and tweak Web sites according to guidelines such as WCAG). In this Chapter the authors present SWAF, the Semantic Web AccessibilityFramework, a base framework for supporting the integration of accessibility services into Web design and development processes. SWAF affords both tailoring accessibility to user needs and specifying the semantic validation of accessibility guidelines in different application situations.