5 April 2007

The rise of Web 2.0 will create a raft of new accessibility challenges for designers to overcome, an industry analyst has claimed.

As more information can now be visualised onscreen, the risk of excluding visually-impaired web users heightens, according to Peter Abrahams, the Practice Leader of Accessibility and Usability at Bloor Research.

He said that various elements and possible limitations to a user's ability should be considered in order to overcome these fresh obstacles; colour blindness, magnification, mouseless access and screen readers must all be addressed to ensure accessibility.

"The design principles underlying the WCAG [Web Content Accessibility Guidelines] standards apply equally to visualisation," remarked the expert.

However, he added that the large majority of this work to ensure accessibility needs to be provided by the visualisation technology, rather than being the responsibility of webmasters.

According to Tim O'Reilly, who claims joint responsibility for coining the term Web 2.0, the idea developed in the wake of the dotcom crash, with developers realising the true potential of the web.

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