Accessibility

How to spell accessibility

13 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce accessibility

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accessibility mean?

1. nounThe quality of being easy to reach, enter, use, or understand, especially for people with disabilities.

Accessibility in a sentence

• The new ramp greatly improved wheelchair accessibility to the library.

• The website failed an audit for poor accessibility to screen reader users.

Where does accessibility come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb cedere, which meant 'to go' or 'to yield', and its compound accedere, meaning 'to approach' or 'to come near'. From accedere came the Latin noun accessus, 'an approach', which gave English the word 'access'. The adjective 'accessible', meaning 'able to be reached or entered', was formed in the late Latin accessibilis and arrived in English through Old French in the 1400s. Adding the noun-forming ending -ity produced 'accessibility', the quality or state of being reachable, which became common from the 1700s onward. In modern use it has taken on a strong sense of designing buildings, products, and websites so that people with disabilities can use them. The spelling trap lives in the doubled c and doubled s plus the soft -ibility ending: it is access plus -ibility, never an -ability ending.

How the word is built

• ac- (toward)
• cess (from cedere: to go, to yield)
• -ible (able to be)
• -ity (noun of quality)