Digital Accessibility is part of equitable access for people with disabilities, a value we hold as a library, as a university, and as a public institution.
Because the category of “people with disabilities” is extremely diverse — including folks with a range of sensory and physical capacities, using a range of different technologies and devices — digital accessibility principles focus on the “universal design” of digital information. This means designing digital information to be perceivable, operable, and understandable across all these differences.
As such, accessibility principles promote design that works better
for a range of users with and without disabilities
with the many technologies that interact with content
in changing external circumstances
Digital content created without accessibility principles may result in barriers and inequities that are at odds with our values and obligations, including:
content that is completely unusable for some groups of people
e.g. a video interview with no closed captions for Deaf or hard of hearing viewers
content that is far more complicated on some devices
e.g. a web form that can be completed with three mouse clicks but requires dozens of keystrokes with other input technologies
Digital Accessibility -- Why it Matters from the University of Michigan Library
30 years after Americans with Disabilities Act, college students say law is not enough From NBC News
Research brief: higher education and the ADA
The impact of the Americans With Disabilities Act on Higher Education
A blog post from the American Federation for the Blind.