Two availability, or why accessibility and availability are not the same
May 19, 2016 is the third Thursday of the fifth month, which means Global Accessibility Awareness Day or Universal Accessibility Awareness Day . On this day, it is customary to talk about accessibility, as well as how important it is to take into account when developing web resources and software. However, practice shows that in the Russian-speaking IT-community it would not hurt to talk not only about the importance of accessibility, but about what it generally is, since many clearly still do not understand the difference between accessibility and availability.
In particular, on Habrahabr, articles on accessibility of systems appear regularly in the Accessibility hub, from where they are eventually cleared by accessibility enthusiasts.
You have a question: “And what's the big deal about this?” Then we go to you!
In the IT sphere, two English-language terms are actively used - “accessibility” and “availability”, which, as a rule, both are translated into Russian as “accessibility”. Most likely, it is precisely this that determines the fact that many Russian-speaking specialists, trying to speak on the topic of system availability and seeing the hub about accessibility, assume that this is about the same thing. However, the fact is that accessibility and availability are two completely different availability, so you cannot mix these concepts.
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Simply put, accessibility is the availability of a product for people with various physical and / or hardware limitations, and availability is the availability of a system for accessing it. For example, for a site, accessibility is the ability to use it by a person with missing eyesight, and availability is how stable this site is.
Thus, today's Global Accessibility Awareness Day is dedicated not to how important it is to make reliable systems, but to how important it is to make products that people with various restrictions can use. Accordingly, in the Accessibility hub, you need to write not about the high availability of systems, but about the adaptation of interfaces for people with disabilities.
Of course, no one is against high availability, just about accessibility would also be nice to at least know, but ideally still take it into account. A day of universal awareness of accessibility is a good reason to think about it.
In particular, on Habrahabr, articles on accessibility of systems appear regularly in the Accessibility hub, from where they are eventually cleared by accessibility enthusiasts.
You have a question: “And what's the big deal about this?” Then we go to you!
In the IT sphere, two English-language terms are actively used - “accessibility” and “availability”, which, as a rule, both are translated into Russian as “accessibility”. Most likely, it is precisely this that determines the fact that many Russian-speaking specialists, trying to speak on the topic of system availability and seeing the hub about accessibility, assume that this is about the same thing. However, the fact is that accessibility and availability are two completely different availability, so you cannot mix these concepts.
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- Accessibility is a property of products (tangible or intangible) that characterizes the possibility of using them by as many different users as possible, regardless of the limitations of these users.
- Availability is a property of technical systems, characterizing their ability to be protected and easily recovered from small downtime in a short time, and mainly by automated means in order to avoid unfulfilled maintenance.
Simply put, accessibility is the availability of a product for people with various physical and / or hardware limitations, and availability is the availability of a system for accessing it. For example, for a site, accessibility is the ability to use it by a person with missing eyesight, and availability is how stable this site is.
Thus, today's Global Accessibility Awareness Day is dedicated not to how important it is to make reliable systems, but to how important it is to make products that people with various restrictions can use. Accordingly, in the Accessibility hub, you need to write not about the high availability of systems, but about the adaptation of interfaces for people with disabilities.
Of course, no one is against high availability, just about accessibility would also be nice to at least know, but ideally still take it into account. A day of universal awareness of accessibility is a good reason to think about it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/301172/
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