Design Template by Anonymous

Barriers and guidelines

Barriers to Accessibility

While is is impossible to provide a comprehensive list of disabilities that can influence the considerations you need to make for web design, this list will talk about the most common impairments and what to think about when building your website.

Visual impairments

Visual impairments, such as blindness, low vision, or color blindness, can pose challenges to users trying to navigate the website with visual elements. For users with an impairment such as color blindness or some minor visual challenges, the primary concern is going to be in separating the intended content from the background or decorative elements. For those who are completely blind or have more significant visual impairments, the website will need to be designed so that a screan reader tool can gather all of the information it needs from the website and present it to the user.

Audible impairments

Audible impairments, such as deafness and hard of hearing, impact a users ability to perceive audio content, including video where there are important audio cues. Websites which include audio content will need to consider how to make the content available to those with a hearing impairment, whether that takes the form of basic captions or a more complicated solution.

Motor impairments

Motor impairments, which can occur from any number of issues like paralysis, arthritis, muscular problems or a physical injury, can affect users ability to interact with mice, keyboards and other input devices. Due to the large variety of keyboards available for people with a physical disability, creating a website that can be interacted with using keyboards is a great start.

Cognitive and neurological disabilities

Cognitive and neurological disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD or autism spectrum disorder can present challenges for users relating to comprehension, memory and focus. For these users, complex navigation structures, excessive website content, distracting design elements and a general overload of items cluttering the webpage can make using the website challenging for someone with a neurological disability.

W3C Guidelines

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is responsible for regulating accessibility of websites, and they provide some useful guidelines for how to make your website more accessible.

The guidelines are represented by the acronym P.O.U.R. Below is a direct quote from the W3C website:

Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can't be invisible to all of their senses)

Operable

User interface components and navigation must be operable. This means that users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)

Understandable

Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable. This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding)

Robust

Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means that users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible)

When designing a website, it is best to keep these four principles in mind. Though your implementation of the technology may differ from other implementations of these features, Having these ideas in mind while you are working will ensure that the work you are doing is providing maximum value to the users and doesn't stray into creating pointless features which confuse users.