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accessibility — English
The ease with which anything or place can be reached, found or entered. A number of factors could make a certain place more accessible or less accessible. These include distance, altitude (height above sea-level), political reasons, security arrangements, cultural taboos, and many more. New York City is more accessible than the moon because a trip by boat, motorcar, train, bus or aeroplane to New York is more readily available and costs far less than a space flight to the moon. The top of Table Mountain in Cape Town is more accessible than the peak of Mount Everest because the atmosphere on Everest contains too little oxygen to sustain human life. Any relatively young and reasonably fit person can walk to the top of Table Mountain – albeit a stiff walk! – but to climb to the summit of Everest, one needs “bottled” oxygen from oxygen canisters that have to be carried up the mountain (see “adventure tourism” and “responsible tourism”). People using wheelchairs might find it impossible to enter certain buildings, which makes those buildings inaccessible for them. For political reasons, there is no easy movement of people between South and North Korea, although they are situated right next to one another. Consequently, North Korea is highly inaccessible for South Koreans. For security reasons it is very difficult or even impossible to enter the Union Buildings in Pretoria (the seat of government), but Unisa’s buildings on the Pretoria campus may be entered by any member of the general public. Accessibility of information is another good example. It is easy to find information about the soccer matches played in South Africa in any particular week, but information about the nuclear capability of the USA is highly inaccessible (difficult or impossible to come by).
