Accessibility from scratch
The approach we are describing can be called accessibility from scratch. By building on recognised Design For All methodologies, systems should be built in such a way that the mainstream solution should be easily adaptable and extensible to add functionality for niche markets. As a result of the comprehensive lack of understanding of this concept at the fundamental design level, and strict deadlines to complete software projects, most accessible solutions become appended onto an ill-suited system as an afterthought: the accessible solution is then itself ill-conceived and unlikely to meet the needs of the end-user.
Requirements never stay the same over time: requirements change for all users of any service. The end-user’s sight or other senses may deteriorate over time, their needs being met with appropriate features in accessible media. The differentiation of user requirements in general might grow, forcing the system to deal with a broader variety of processing possibilities with which it cannot cope. The changing nature of requirements- and with that the potential design of any system- is a fundamental issue in the design of an inclusive world. The various MPEG family members operate at different abstraction levels with some communication between these abstraction levels. The process of contriving a procedure to interface the various processing levels should be based on use. The difficulty lies in achieving a level of description of the user requirements that allows re-description in technological terms. This re-description ideally leads to specifications and ultimately implementations. These implementations 'prove’ the viability of the concept: it is the proof of the hypothesis. The process of standardisation that runs in parallel with this ensures extraction of higher level descriptions and these are aggregated down to the earlier family members. Using this built-in feature to provide 'slots’ for common and specialised accessibility requirements would create what we refer to as accessibility from scratch. So the representation of the interplay between the various user groups should always remain accessible. If all relevant entities in a representation system remain accessible, creating meaningful mappings is a matter of connecting the appropriate entities. For this reason, accessibility from scratch is of fundamental importance for deep access to content.
Accessibility can also be viewed from a wider angle. Being able to see content in whatever modality; perceive its context; and attach a useful meaning to it requires that the user be able to access this content, its context and relevant software application in a way that meets that particular user's consumption preferences. These preferences may become requirements over time - we all get older. Being able to attach useful meanings to content is what lies at the very basis of the preservation and education of thought. Attaching useful meanings to content underpins the basis of culture, commerce and civilisation. Being able to access software, content and the potential for understanding it unleashes, requires us to be able to gain access to software and not be hindered by huge costs, complexity, lack of support and additional barriers.
Given the differences between the traditional approach to accessibility and the wider view outlined above, we are in something of a transitional phase at this time. From the software producer, business community and the Open Source System community we see a move towards the inclusion of accessibility features into systems, tools and the programming languages themselves as system wide core functionalities (examples being KDE, GNOME, and Java Accessibility). From the accessibility community we see a move towards more advanced and abstract descriptions of the procedures involved in moving from 'common' content towards content that is processed to be granted accessible certification. A good example of such a move is the Web Content Authoring Guidelines 1.0 and 2.0, which provide detailed guidelines on how to (re)structure and enhance content to ensure a sufficient level of accessibility. The EUAIN Network will actively contribute to the implementation of WCAG 2.
By working within MPEG environments it should be possible to move towards accessible information processing frameworks that allow associations of the requirements of the various interactor requirements with one another. Such an approach would move towards the synchronised provision of accessible digital content to new markets.