RIVISTA INTERNAZIONALE DI TECNICA DELLA TRADUZIONE
Abstract
The starting point of this study is the Convention of the United Nations on the rights of persons with disabilities, which states that participation to social life is a fundamental human right and places great emphasis on the principle of accessibility as a key factor for its achievement. Given that in today’s society information – especially on the web – plays a crucial role in facilitating access to many aspects of daily life, the aim of the study is to assess whether the websites of a number of public facilities take into account e-accessibility, i.e. the particular needs of people with disabilities. A comparison was carried out among 27 websites in three different languages (German, Dutch and Italian) in order to evaluate their accessibility and communicative adequacy, also with regard to the use of non-discriminatory language. The main hypothesis of the study is that different cultures show different awareness and sensitivity levels towards these issues, with such differences being reflected in the language and design of the websites. If this assumption of cultural differences is true, then translators can play an important social role by importing and disseminating the “best communicative practices”, and contrastive analyses of this kind can provide them with the necessary detailed knowledge.
