At the More Than Gadgets conference held in Perth in 2009, Australian Disability Discrimination Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes stressed the importance of social networking sites to people with disability. He suggested that social networking could open a new world to people with disability and predicted that in the future people not using these online tools (including by those without disability) would effectively be disabled as they would not have access to vital information and ways to communicate. In January 2011, US President Obama described access to social networks as one of a number of core universal values.
As the way people access computers and the Internet evolves alongside what they are doing online, there is a need to try and ensure access to as wide a group as possible. This is particularly important in the context of education, as the use of online social networks is increasingly integrated into students educational experience. This paper explores accessibility issues for people with disability in relation to three prominent online social networks, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Each has had accessibility problems for people with disabilities. Their approaches to these issues have varied remarkably.
Facebook was initially criticised for its highly inaccessible interface, but belatedly has worked with disability groups to become more accessible, albeit with the notable exceptions of many of its associated applications such as Farmville. MySpace despite its large traditional media company owners has steadfastly ignored issues of accessibility. Twitter, despite its simple premise of short messages as status updates, was also initially quite inaccessible. However the relatively open nature of the platform has allowed outside users to intervene and provide a more accessible interface.
This paper explores how each of these platforms has dealt with accessibility over time and some of the forces that have shaped these approaches. It also looks at the longer term implication of these approaches. It also puts the case for accessibility to become a fundamental part of the design process for online platforms, rather than a retrofitted solution.
