WEB 2.0 ACCESSIBILITY AND ADAPTATION FOR AUSTRALIAN SPECIAL NEEDS ...

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WEB 2.0 ACCESSIBILITY AND ADAPTATION FOR AUSTRALIAN SPECIAL NEEDS COMMUNITIES, SUCH AS ACQUIRED BRAIN INJURY

Youssef AbiKhattar University of Western Sydney Steve Hansen School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on addressing the accessibility and adaptation issues of producing community web sites for people with special needs such as Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). A summary of the characteristics and demographics of the ABI community in Australia is presented along with an identification of various needs of this community that could be addressed by Web 2.0. and associated accessibility and adaption issues. This is followed with a review of current Australian ABI webbased community and support sites and their areas of support. As there is considerable activity and use of Facebook for individual ABI groups, the general features and limitations of Facebook are also presented.

KEYWORDS Web 2.0, Accessibility, Adaptability, Acquired Brain Injury

1.

INTRODUCTION

The 1999 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) study on the definition, incidence and prevalence of acquired brain injury in Australia, estimated that about 1.9% of the Australian population were classified as having Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), i.e, about 338,700 at that time (Fortune & Wen, 1999). This study also compared the Australian statistics with others globally, with similar outcomes. Ten years on from this study, the ABI population, here in Australia and globally, represents a sizable community that as this paper presents, has particular accessibility and adaption needs in terms of Web 2.0. In conjunction with the ABI community itself there is also the considerable support/family community associated with each ABI person. Section 2 of this paper gives a summary from the literature of characteristics and demographics of the ABI community in Australia, relating this to Web 2.0. In particular this identifies various aspects of accessibility and adaptation that need attention in communitybased web interactions. This is followed in section 3 with a review of current webbased community and support sites and their areas of support. As there is considerable activity and use of Facebook for individual ABI groups, section 4 examines the features and limitations of Facebook. The concluding section give some recommendations based on an analysis of the previous sections.

2. ACQUIRED BRAIN INJURY (ABI)

2.1 Overview

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), also called or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), may occur when there has been some damage to brain function from an accident or trauma subsequent to birth. These can include vehicle