Location and access: Issues enabling accessibility of information

Abstract

Accessibility is defined by the AccessForAll community as the matching of people's information and service needs with their needs and preferences in terms of intellectual and sensory engagement with that information or service, and control of it (IMS Global Learning Consortium, 2006). For instance, a person who is engaged in an eyes-busy activity such as driving a vehicle is not well matched to information when they are required to read small text on a screen. A person who does not speak French is not well matched to French instructions for buying a bus ticket. A person who is dyslexic and another who is not a native speaker of a given language may find they can understand content better if it is supported by images and does not use examples that are culturally-specific. In this chapter, the authors focus on the problems associated with accessibility of resource content that are related to location. These include problems that are caused by changes in location, both macro-changes such as are involved when a user moves from one country or language region to another and micro-changes such as when a user moves from a home computer to an office computer, or between devices within the same building. As more users of Web-delivered mapping take up Broadband access and service providers exploit the new facilities to cross language and borders, so more users are denied or disenfranchised from public services and private activities by location-related problems. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.