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2. Understanding the Big Picture
2. Understanding the Big Picture
Types of Disabilities and Associated Barriers
The Sharp Clothing Company recently completed upgrading all of its premises to include wheelchair access ramps, accessible washrooms, wheelchair-height customer service desks, and so on. The management was confident everything was done to meet accessibility standards, so they were surprised to receive a customer complaint about the company’s online store being completely inaccessible by keyboard.
You have been asked to investigate the issue. After looking into the complaint you are surprised to find that there were many different types of disabilities and each one with its own accessibility challenges. You decide you need to learn more about how people with different disabilities use the web and digital information, since you see now there is more to accessibility than providing access for wheelchair users.
To understand where accessibility issues can arise, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of a range of disabilities and the related barriers found in digital content. These include:
- people who are blind
- people with low vision
- people who are deaf or hard of hearing
- people with mobility-related disabilities
- people with learning or cognitive disabilities
Not all people with disabilities encounter barriers in digital content, and those with different types of disabilities encounter different types of barriers. For instance, if a person is in a wheelchair, they may encounter no barriers at all in digital content. A person who is blind will experience different barriers than a person with limited vision. Many of the barriers that people with disabilities encounter on the web are often barriers found in electronic documents and multimedia. Different types of disabilities and some of their commonly associated barriers are described here.
Watch the following video to see how students with disabilities experience the Internet.
Video: Experiences of Students with Disabilities
© Jared Smith. Released under the terms of a Standard YouTube License. All rights reserved.
In this video, David Berman talks about types of disabilities and their associated barriers.
Video: Web Accessibility Matters: Difficulties and Technologies: Avoiding Tradeoffs
© davidbermancom. Released under the terms of a Standard YouTube License. All rights reserved.
People who Are Blind
People who are blind tend to face the most barriers in digital content, given the visual nature of much digital content. They will often use a screen reader to access their computer or device, and may use a refreshable Braille display to convert text to Braille.
Common barriers for this group include:
- Visual content that has no text alternative
- Functional elements that cannot be controlled with a keyboard
- Overly complex or excessive amounts of content
- Inability to navigate within a page of content
- Content that is not structured (i.e., missing proper headings)
- Inconsistent navigation
- Time limits (i