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Disability as a continuum

I’ve been thinking more about accessibility and inclusive design. I’ve put together a little list of three types of disabilities, with three things that we designers and developers can do to make our sites better for them.

As a quick reminder, it might be helpful to (re)define disability. What we define as a disability has changed a bit. This definition from the excellent A Web For Everyone is really great:

Ability (functional capability) + Barrier (created by product) = Disability (conflict between Ability and Barrier)

Physical

Someone’s functional capacity could be affected by:

  • having a condition like arthritis, cerebral palsy, fibromyalgia, or lupus;
  • being elderly and having decreased and less precise motor control;
  • having an injury.

To avoid putting up barriers, we can:

  • having large clicks areas;
  • making sure everything is keyboard-compatible (have focusable elements like links and buttons);
  • providing skip-to-content links as the first thing in the page.

Visual

Someone’s functional capacity could be affected by:

  • being blind, having low vision or poor eyesight, or being color blind;
  • being elderly and having poorer vision;
  • using an old or low-quality screens with low contrast and dodgy colors or being outside on a sunny day trying to use the shiny screen of a phone.

To avoid putting up barriers, we can:

  • having structured content using semantic HTML, having form inputs with associated labels, and having descriptive links and headings;
  • having information that isn’t only in images, that doesn’t rely on colour, or doesn’t have low contrast.
  • having content that zooms well.

Cognitive

Someone’s functional capacity could be affected by:

  • having autism, dyslexia, or a learning disability;
  • the content being not in the user’s first language;
  • being distracted or in a rush and not paying full attention.

To avoid putting up barriers, we can:

  • using direct language and have clear and consistent layout and navigation;
  • using images, audio, and video as additional methods of conveying information;
  • having descriptive link and button text.

What next?

I’m going to pick one of the things from the “we can” lists and review something I’m working on, to see how I can avoid putting up barriers that would prevent someone from using the site.