digital media access group
...providing an expert accessibility consultancy
Background and Beliefs
The Digital Media Access Group is an expert accessibility consultancy based in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee
The School of Computing is one of the foremost centres in the world researching into information and communications technology for elderly and disabled people.
The Digital Media Access Group has officially been running since 1999 and came from an identified need to help companies and organisations improve the accessibility of web and other digital resources. However, the group has been working in this field since 1998.
The Group evolved from the recently completed Disability and Information Systems in Higher Education (DISinHE) project, also based in the School of Computing, which existed as a clearing-house of information relating to disability and IT to the UK Higher Education community rather than a source of individual support. It was clear from the enquiries to DISinHE that there was a need for practical help for managers and developers who realised they needed to make their web resources accessible for people with disabilities.
The Digital Media Access Group was one of the first such groups in the UK, if not worldwide, aimed at supporting organisations improving their web accessibility on an individual basis.
It is clear to the Digital Media Access Group that accessibility is about more than helping disabled people access information (in this case on the Internet) - there is a strong business case for considering accessible design. There are groups of people who have physical and cognitive characteristics which can effectively render them disabled - but would never class themselves as such, for example children, and particularly the elderly. This group of people is a potentially huge market to tap into for companies, and should not be marginalised.
Accessible design helps to make web sites easier to use with less than optimal browsing technologies, such as low bandwidth Internet connections or older browsers. It also helps to cater for browsing with newer, 'mobile Internet' devices such as WAP phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), which also have limitations in, for example, screen size and resolution.
Additionally, the Group strongly believes that improving accessibility also increases usability - and hence economic potential - of web sites for all users. We try to approach accessibility in a holistic way and demonstrate to companies that there are many benefits of accessible design in addition to making things easier for disabled people and conforming to legislation. We are conscious that recent changes to legislation in the UK, USA and elsewhere are present as a driver to ensure that organisations take the issues seriously.
We also want to stress that we do not see creative, innovative and visually pleasing design as being mutually exclusive to usable and accessible design. Instead, we simply believe that designers should design for the users of their sites, whoever they may be, and we want to work with others to minimise exclusion while pushing forward the Web to its true potential as the most exciting medium for communication available to us.