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Design Ethos - Thinking About Accessibility

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Edited by Robert Farrow, Monday, 27 Sep 2010, 12:52

Slatin (2003) writes the following:

None of us would knowingly build a course Web site that students of color, or students who are women, or students who are men, would be unable to use simply by virtue of their racial or ethnic status or their gender. It should be equally unthinkable for us to design web resources for our classes that are inaccessible to students or colleagues with disabilities simply because of those disabilities. It’s no less morally wrong to discriminate against individuals on the basis of disability than on the basis of race or gender or creed, and it’s no less against the law.

This seems to be a clear example of conflating acts of omission and acts of commission.  Actively discriminating against particular groups is not the same thing as failing to consider them, and certainly not morally equivalent.

Slatin, J. M. Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Website More Usable for Everyone. (Boston: Addison-Welsley, 2002)
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