How People with Disabilities Use Digital Technology.
Visual Disabilities.
Visual disabilities affect how people see,
including partial vision in one or both eyes, not seeing at all,
or seeing in a range of different ways including colors and brightness.
People who are blind use assistive technology
on computers and mobile phones called screen readers.
These software tools can read the information
on the screen out loud, or they can present it in Braille.
Screen readers can process websites and apps with correctly coded headings,
lists, links, buttons, and other structures much better.
Bird migration is the regular seasonal movement, often north and south along a flyway,
between breeding and wintering grounds.
Many species of bird migrate. Migration carries high costs.
(A map of the world, showing some example bird migration routes image)
Websites and apps
also need to work with a keyboard and have text alternatives for images.
However, most people with visual disabilities
are not blind but have some form of low vision.
This means that people can partially see,
just not clearly, or within the full range of vision.
Some people with low vision use screen magnification software
as a digital magnifying glass to enlarge everything on the screen.
This includes images, text and the mouse pointer.
With this, people only see small parts of the screen at a time,
so they rely on visual cues and consistent design in websites
and apps to stay oriented and navigate effectively.
Others with low
vision might not use the same assistive technology.
They might adjust properties in the web, browser or operating system,
such as increasing the default text size to better see the text.
Websites and apps that are programed and designed to adapt to the properties
set by the users, such as different text sizes, font type and line spacing.
Allow people to use the content without the text overlapping, getting cropped
or requiring them to scroll both vertically and horizontally.
People who cannot distinguish certain colors are often called “color blind”.
Websites and apps that avoid
text with low contrast,
are easier to use.
It’s also important that websites and apps don’t use only color
to communicate information, but do use text and symbols in addition
to color, such as an asterisk to indicate required input fields.
Some people are sensitive to bright light,
so it's important that websites and apps can adapt to the color schemes
that people set in their browsers and operating systems.
You can make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It's about people.
For more information from the Web Accessibility Initiative
on how people with Disabilities use Digital Technology
visit w3.org/WAI/people