Digital Humanities is for Everyone

accessible, adj

“Able to be received, acquired, or made use of; open or available”

What is Accessibility?

According to CBC 13.7 per cent of Canadians live with a disability meaning that over 3.8 million people identify as having some sort of disability. With over 1 in 10 people affected and the statistics rising as we age it is imperative that our focus is on ensuring the world is accessible.

But what does it mean to be accessible?

Everyone has different needs in order to easily access content and people with disabilities often have specific requirements. When we are publishing content online, it is imperative that we are aware of the fact that people have needs we may not and do our best to accomodate. As a student with non-verbal learning disability, accessibility has long been on my radar as an important discussion to be having. Despite the fact that there is such a large percentage of the population with a disability, many needs go ignored until somebody complains. This places the responsibility on those that need accomodation to seek it out themselves which can often become a problem. Many people do not know what resources are available and without the appropriate resources they may not even know it could be easier or that there is an issue at all. Often people don’t know that there are workarounds available because they have so long managed without them despite the fact that it may make things easier. This points again to openness about what is available and discussion so as to make people more aware. As such, it is important to be continuously working toward an awareness of what people need in order to access your content easily. Even if you never meet everyone’s personal needs a constant attempt to learn more from others is important. Often it is just a matter of asking. If test our content on people we can learn about what is working, what is not, and what we can do better. We can work to be as accessible as possible but because of the number of needs people have it is important to ask questions from those who will actually be accessing the information. You can never be perfect for everyone but it is important to try to be as broadly accessible as possible.

Accessibility and Digital Humanities:

“Universal design is design that involves conscious decisions about accessibility for all, and it is a philosophy that should be adopted more widely by digital humanities scholars.” - George H. Williams

As an emerging field, Digital Humanities is often working with new technologies. Often when these come out they have their own issues with accessibility that do not get addressed until somebody complains. I think instead, projects would best be approached with an eye to being accessible from the beginning. While we could not possibly meet everyone’s needs it would be a start to world with more accessible content. Accessibility should be seen as a learning experience in which we constantly work to become better for all people.

Some Tips for Web Accessibility from Eleanor Ratliff:

• When selecting a typeface, look for letterforms that are clear and distinct.
• Think carefully about spaces between, around, and within letterforms and clusters of words.
• Avoid long sentences.
• Keep headings clear and concise.
• Write for your audience and cut the jargon unless it’s absolutely necessary.
• Build with web standards.
• Think twice about icon fonts.
• Show people how to override font styles.

Links:

-Accessibility Whack-A-Mole by Eleanor Ratliff https://alistapart.com/article/accessibility-whack-a-mole

-I Am Not Broken: The Language of Disability by BookwormBlues http://www.bookwormblues.net/2014/09/10/i-am-not-broken-the-language-of-disability/http://www.bookwormblues.net/2014/09/10/i-am-not-broken-the-language-of-disability/

-Fortson, Melissa. Shared Library of Accessibility Resources https://www.diigo.com/profile/mbfortson/dm2017a11y

-Williams, G. ‘Access’ Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities https://digitalpedagogy.mla.hcommons.org/keywords/access/

-Williams, G. 2012 ‘Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities’ Debates in the Digital Humanities [http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/44http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/44]

-WC3 Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities [https://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences]

My annotations can be found here: https://hypothes.is/users/kirstenbussiere