Conceptual Foundations

In this sense, disability always results from the interaction between the individual and his or her environment.

Structural vs. individual measures

This always results in at least two approaches to measures for the inclusion and participation of people with disabilities: individual vs. structural measures or accommodation vs. accessibility.

Individual measures (accommodation) relate to individual support services such as compensation for disadvantages, writing assistance or the (individual) use of assistive technologies such as wheelchairs or screen readers.

Structural measures (accessibility) relate to the environment. E.g. ramps for wheelchairs or an accessible technical infrastructure that can be operated with screen readers. Measures for accessible learning materials are structural measures.

Universal Design

external page Universal design is a design concept that aims to design products, but also entire systems, in such a way that they can be used by as many people as possible. In the area of digital environments, the focus is on two aspects: Flexibility of use, so that user interfaces and content can be easily adapted to individual needs, and Compatibility with assistive technologies (AT), e.g. screen readers, where this is not sufficient.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG

The internationally established and in many places legally binding external page WCAG guidelines for digital user interfaces of the W3C can be seen as the implementation and concretization of the principles of universal design. In the current version 2.2, the WCAG include 87 success criteria and focus mainly on sensory, i.e. visual and auditory, and motor impairments. All measures recommended at ETH are based on the WCAG guidelines. Accordingly, the WCAG also serve as a benchmark for the assessment of content and systems.

Container vs. Content

All accessibility problems, or violations of the WCAG, usually have one of two possible sources:The container, the system, the infrastructure on the one hand, or the content, the actual content on the other.

While container aspects must be resolved centrally or alternative technical solutions must be sought, content aspects can usually only be resolved by the creators of the content themselves, the content creators. They are best placed to structure their own content in a meaningful way, they know best what they want to convey with a particular image and they want to keep the design of their content under their own control. This is why it is so important to spread the so-called editorial skills for accessibility widely among them.