Overview

Research aims and objectives

The overall aims of Inclusive New Media Design are:

To examine ways in which socially inclusive new media might be designed for disabled communities, particularly intellectually disabled communities;
To contribute towards the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in the WWW.

The specific objectives are:

To explore the place of web accessibility guidelines within the practices of new media designers and within creative design processes;
To explore the factors which affect the take up of accessibility guidelines and the accessibility ethos (for example, clients’ priorities and interests);
To examine the effectiveness of guidelines as a way of achieving accessible web design;
To examine the effectiveness of approaches other than guidelines as a way of achieving accessible web design (for example, the inclusion of intellectually disabled users in the design process, or demonstrations of exemplary accessible web design);
To disseminate findings amongst relevant academics, new media designers and developers and key international bodies such as W3C.

Some accessibility sites are downright ugly, but the problem lies with those sites’ designers and not with accessibility, which carries no visual penalty.

Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing with Web Standards, 2003

Although serving the needs of people with disabilities should of course be a concern, the far wider issue – that accessibility is a matter of usability – has rarely been discussed. As designer professionals, we should be designing our content so it is globally accessible and meets the needs of as many people as is possible and practical given our specific circumstances, regardless of their abilities or the type of device they choose to access the Web

Andy Clarke, Transcending CSS: the fine art of web design, 2006