Notwithstanding my already stated general (but not overly strong)
opposition to the proposed change from accessibility --> adaptability; I
fully endorse Bob's rephrasing of the Adaptability definition as applied
to Accessibility.
Cheers,
Martyn
Martyn Cooper
Head: Accessibility in Educational Media
Open University, UK
-----Original Message-----
From: DCMI Accessibility Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Dodd, Robert
Sent: 05 August 2005 06:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: From accessibility --> adaptability
Yes, but...
A better way of putting it might be to say:
Adaptability is a service required where systems need to dynamically
change to meet the needs and expectations of their end-users. This may
be to match the user's capabilities in terms of vision, hearing,
mobility, and cognition (commonly termed Accessibility) or to match
changes in the user's environment such as lighting levels, or to match a
user's perception of system behaviour such as switching between "basic"
and "expert" modes of operation.
I think its better to say it in this way, rather than suggest that
Accessibility is a subset of Adaptability, because it isn't really; I
can make an accessibile door by making it wide enough to allow
wheelchair access, but the door doesn't adapt to the needs of the
specific user, which I think is what you wan the new working group to
focus on.
Bob Dodd
Accessibility Research Centre
School of Computing
University of Teesside
Middlesbrough
Tees Valley TS1 3BA
United Kingdom
-----Original Message-----
From: DCMI Accessibility Group on behalf of Liddy Nevile
Sent: Fri 05/08/2005 11:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: From accessibility --> adaptability
Please read this message and respond to me asap.
As you all know, we have struggled away with our accessibility work
and we proposed a new term but still have not managed to get that
finalised. We have done a lot of work to simplify and DC-ify our
proposal and think that it is getting somewhere fast (indeed we hope
so).
But we have another problem:
We would like to hear from members of this list about a proposal to
close down the Accessibility WG and start an Adaptability WG.
When the Usage Board advised us of the problem they were having with
the name 'accessibility' and that their research showed that it is
not clear to people what we mean, we put that together with other
research and decided to work with the name 'adaptability' instead.
The Usage Board members found that our 'accessibility' got confused
with the access issues of librarians and others so it might be about
digital rights, or it might be about facilities etc - it was not
distinct. We decided that If we are working on adaptability in
general, then accessibility for people with disabilities is a sub-set
of that work. (This is a tiny bit tricky as in some places, people
are described as having disabilities and in others, esp. Europe and
wherever the WHO works, the relationship between people and their
circumstances, often man-made, results in disabilities.)
In essence, we would like a new element called adaptability (which
includes accessibility as we know it) and we will make an application
profile using it and other DC terms for describing the accessibility
of resources.
Adaptability works for people who are not able to access resources
and services due to the sort of problems that are of interest to the
current DC Accessibility community as well as for people who are
concerned about adaptability for device independence (eg putting web
pages on phone screens) and other kinds of adaptation. The advantage
of the wider term is that communities who have not thought about
accessibility but are concerned about adaptability will be in a good
position to add accessibility in to their mix, and that the efforts
will be combined rather than fragmented.
If we are to proceed with this change, ie to set up the adaptability
working group, we need to know that we have the support of the DC
Accessibility community in this effort.
Please respond to this email with just yes (if you are happy with the
change), no (if you are not), or comments if you would like to
contribute to the debate. Please take care to address your email to
me, not the list: mailto:[log in to unmask]
Thank you
Liddy
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