Digital Dictionary

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Accessibility

Nathalie Pinède

MICA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Pessac, France

Accessibility is emerging as a major concept with regard to the disability-digital articulation. Accessibility can be understood as a component of “access” (Fougeyrollas et al. 2014), even if we often encounter effects of superposition and confusion between the terms “access” and “accessibility”. Nevertheless, while there is no consensual definition of accessibility, certain constitutive dimensions allow us to distinguish it from the concept of access, which is more positioned at a political and theoretical level. The geographical aspect, correlated with the notion of distance and the inscription in a space, constitutes a first dimension. But with accessibility, it is also a question of perception by people, particularly in terms of ease of access, which paves the way to a differentiated apprehension depending on the individual. Finally, accessibility is significantly operational in nature and linked to practices, particularly in the form of norms and standards. Thus, accessibility shifts the generic issue of access to a more subjective vision, at the center of which individuals, in all their diversity, must find their place. This is the meaning of the definition of accessibility proposed by the French Interministerial Delegation for Disabled People (Délégation interministérielle des personnes handicapées) in 2006, an open definition based on both personal and environmental factors:

Accessibility ...