In this video from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
we hear from nine people with different disabilities -
how they use digital technology,
the barriers they face with bad designs,
and how technology works well
when it is accessible.
Ade - reporter with limited use of his arms.
Hello! I’m Ade,
I’m quadriplegic, which means I have limited movement
in my arms as well as my legs.
The technology I use is really important to me.
I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts,
especially for the programs that I use often.
For example, scrolling a page is much easier with the arrow keys on
the keyboard than by clicking on that button in the scroll bar.
Unfortunately, many websites and apps
don’t work well with my keyboard.
Often what has focus is not clear
or it jumps around completely out of order.
Sometimes that doesn’t work well because some websites
and apps don’t work in landscape orientation,
which is how I setup my tablet so that the
buttons are big enough for me to click.
While I can use a keyboard and joystick,
I can’t use them for long periods because it’s tiring.
So, I recently started using speech control software as well.
It allows me to dictate text instead of typing,
and to say certain commands instead of clicking.
It’s really hard to learn a new way of working after so many years
but I’ve been patient with it and I’m slowly getting used to it.
The most difficult thing is buttons without labels.
It is not clear which voice commands will activate them.
You can help make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It’s about people.
Ian - data scientist with autism.
Hello! I’m Ian.
I’m autistic.
I work for a software company three bus stops from my home.
I’m a data scientist. I enjoy my work very much.
Others find this work difficult because it’s quite technical
but for me, it’s really easy.
Except when something changes
and I don’t have enough time to figure out what changed.
Like, when I was trying to get to an online meeting
and found that the buttons on the app changed.
It was very stressful because
I was worried about being late to the meeting.
Apps that ask for permission before updating
allow me to find a suitable time and adjust to the changes.
Sometimes I press the wrong thing and everything just changes
and I don’t know how to go back.
It makes me feel like I just can’t cope.
I am trying to work, but I just can’t and I start to panic,
and then I can’t even talk anymore.
It’s very important to me when I can roll back and undo changes
that I didn’t intend or expect to happen.
It’s also really frustrating when I have to stop work
because of an error message that doesn’t tell me what the error is.
Error messages that just say “input error” are so useless.
Often it’s something really simple,
like I didn’t use the right format for the date.
Why doesn’t it say that?
I love to cook when I’m not working.
My friends love to eat what I cook because I find the best recipes!
Some cooking websites and apps are easy to use.
My favorite recipe sites list the exact ingredients
and have step-by-step instructions.
It’s easy to find the recipes using the tags and to follow them.
Unfortunately, I can’t use some recipe sites
even though they have recipes I really want to try.
Especially the ones where all sorts of videos start playing
and pop-up windows appear without me pressing anything.
I didn’t ask for this!
These are overwhelming and aren’t the recipe.
All I want is the recipe!
Or some sites use meaningless words and phrases
and don’t even bother explaining them.
I mean - what is a scant cup of brown sugar?
”Scant” could mean so many different things.
Instead of “scant” just say what you mean.
Like a cooking cup filled just below the top
or not quite a full cup.
That would be easier to understand for everyone.
You can help make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It’s about people.
Lexie, online shopper who cannot distinguish between colors (color blindness).
Hello! I’m Lexie.
I was born with deuteranopia and protanopia,
which people often call “color blindness”.
I have difficulty distinguishing between
red, green, orange, and brown,
all of which appear to me as kind of murky brown.
In a store, I often can’t tell the color of
two shoes or two shirts beside each other.
I love online shopping
because it’s often easier for me
when they use the names of the colors
in addition to showing the colors.
Unfortunately,
not all online shops have an accessible checkout experience for me.
Often the sign-up or checkout form says “fields in red are required”.
Most times I can’t tell which fields are required
when they use color only.
Good shops either have the word “required”
or that little star beside the fields,
or even better put the word “optional” beside the ones I can skip.
Not relying on color alone is important for other websites
and apps too!
For example, my favorite fantasy football app
has a symbol for each team
on the jersey of the players, in addition to color.
This helps me spot the players on my team more quickly,
not just by reading the names under each player.
Color issues also happen at work.
For example, when my colleagues highlight words in a document
without using the commenting function.
The commenting function outlines the marked text
in addition to highlighting it.
Another example is when charts don’t have symbols
as well as the colors for lines and bars.
I can’t identify them from color alone.
My team is usually careful about this
but sometimes the suppliers we work with aren’t.
You can help make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It’s about people.
Sophie - basketball fan with Down syndrome.
Hello, I'm Sophie.
I have Down syndrome.
I love basketball!
And I played on my school team,
and now I work in a stadium.
At work, we use an app for our team.
It has a calendar
with all our practices and games.
My job is to record scores and stuff like that.
I can also use it to chat with the coach
and with the players,
and we use it to exchange photos and jokes too.
[chuckles]
Sometimes, I take longer to read things
but this app is really easy to use.
The event or name of the player is at the top,
so I know where I am in the app.
The calendar is also very clear.
It shows the name of the month
or the number of the week at the top too.
Other apps we tried are too confusing -
I could never tell where I am and how to get back.
The biggest problem is buying tickets for games.
I try to use this app for buying
but sometimes
I have to use other apps to get tickets.
Some of these apps are too hard.
When I click on something
it goes somewhere else
or opens another page.
Or, it doesn't have that blue box at the top
so I don't know where I am
and how to get back.
Sometimes it takes too long,
I have to start all over again.
It's a real pain.
I wish buying tickets could be easier.
My dream is to become a senior assistant.
I know I can do it.
Sometimes it's hard
for me to write long things,
but I use the spell-checker every time.
It helps me when coaches use
words I already know.
Otherwise, it takes me even
longer to find the words
in the dictionary.
You can help make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It’s about people.
Dhruv - older adult student who is deaf.
Hello! My name is D-H-R-U-V, Dhruv. I’m Deaf.
I can hear some sounds but not enough to understand speech.
I sign British Sign Language. I think and dream in signs.
I recently enrolled in an online degree.
For my classes I schedule can interpreters who interpret
the lectures and conversations, and voice for me.
I need video conferencing apps with functionality to “pin” videos
of the interpreters so that I can always see them.
Some lectures have realtime captioning typed by human captioners.
This is more accurate than automatic captions, which often
don’t recognize specialized terms in the lectures.
For our assigned videos, I rely on good captions.
These are edited so that each sentence appearing on the screen
is not too long and is synchronized with the audio.
I also often find myself needing to adjust the text size and colors of
the captions, to be able to read them better. Some apps also allow
me to move the captions to the top or bottom of the video,
so that they are not in the way.
In some situations, I find myself lip reading.
For example, when I’m on unplanned calls without interpreters
or other people who can sign.
I learned lip reading over the years because of such
situations but it’s not always reliable for me.
I need to see the person’s mouth, have them speak clearly,
and seeing their gestures also helps. Yet it’s exhausting
and not really something I can keep doing for too long.
I also use the chat function.
Some chat tools support realtime text
rather than line-by-line text messages.
This is much more interactive, and I can engage with my friends in
text conversations as others do by voice.
Of course, the classes also come with a lot of reading.
I’m fine with that, except when the writing is unnecessarily
complex and without structure like lists and headings.
People don’t realize that for me reading text involves extra effort,
because sign language is my native language.
So, like for everyone else, clear and simple writing makes
text easier to understand.
You can help make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It’s about people.
Marta - a marketing assistant who is Deaf and blind.
Hi!
I'm Marta,
a marketing assistant at my school for the Deaf.
I'm Deaf-blind.
I was born Deaf
and have progressive vision loss,
which means I can still see things
if they're large and up-close
but I see less and less each year.
As a Deaf child,
I learned sign language early on.
This is why technology
is so important to me-
it allows me to communicate with more people.
At home,
I have a computer
that can enlarge my documents up to 20 times.
I have a big screen
but can still only see a very small portion of the screen,
and an even smaller portion of the documents
because it's like looking through a magnification lens.
I can find my way around documents
with headings and sections that look different.
For example, this briefing sheet uses
a color for the headings
that is different from the main content,
which makes it easier for me to recognize them.
Oh, and I'm learning to use braille too.
Braille are those dots that you read
with your fingers,
and I have this really cool device
called a “refreshable braille display” -
it's a small device
that I can take with me everywhere,
unlike my computer.
It has apps for email, web and chat,
and some have a special keyboard
for typing in braille.
I read the braille characters
in a row on the device,
which I'm slowly getting used to.
It's always difficult to learn to use something new at first
but I'm getting better at reading and typing braille.
But not all websites and apps work well with magnification
or on my braille display.
Like when I need to look up the bus schedule
to meet up with my friends -
that table doesn't work well when I enlarge it on my phone.
And forget about trying to read it in braille.
I can't tell what row or column I'm in
and it just jumps all over the place!
It makes me nervous
because I can't as easily ask for help
from people around me while I'm out,
so I've been learning how to speak up
and ask companies for more accessible websites and apps
to help me stay independent.
You can help
make technology
accessible
to me.
Accessibility: It's about people.
Stefan - Student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia.
Hello, I'm Stefan.
I have dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
ADHD.
I have difficulty recognizing or sounding out written words,
even though I use those same words in conversation all the time.
It affects my spelling and my reading comprehension.
It often takes me a long time to figure out the individual words I'm reading,
and then it's hard for me to remember
how the words in a sentence fit together in a meaningful way.
Digital books and documents are often much better for me.
On the computer, on a tablet, or - my favorite - on my new e-reader.
I can change the font type, text size and line spacing,
which makes it easier for me to read.
I also use the read aloud function because I read better
when I can see and hear the text at the same time.
It also highlights the words being read aloud
and has a reading ruler, so that I can follow along more easily.
Sometimes, though, digital books and documents don't work well.
Sometimes they are just scanned images.
These also can't be read aloud and I can't change the text size and font.
Some don't have bookmarks, which I use to jump to the parts I want to focus on.
Or, there are long chunks of text without any headings,
so I have difficulty focusing on the content.
It's so much easier when text has more spacing
and graphics to make them easier to follow.
Another problem is when I have to do online research,
I type in words, but sometimes I do it wrong or use a different word
that sounds the same, like “brake” when I mean “break”.
Sometimes I land on websites with all these ads and things
popping up and moving around the screen.
With ADHD, I get distracted by these ads and videos,
and sometimes I click on them and I forget what I was meant to be doing.
I use several pop-up blockers, but they don't always work.
When I find an article I want to read,
I try to remember to switch to reading mode in my browser.
This usually removes all the stuff around the page and lets me focus on the text.
But some websites don't work well and the ads still appear,
or the text is too difficult for me to read.
I love it when websites work well with my settings and extensions.
Like, the extension for spelling and grammar,
which helps me when I'm typing things like emails.
That's very important for me.
You can help make technology accessible to me.
Accessibility: It’s about people.
Elias - retiree with low vision, hand tremor, and mild short-term memory loss.
Hello! I’m Elias.
I’m a retired architect.
Life moves slower now that I’m retired,
and I think my body does too [laughs]!
I see less
and hear less than in my younger days.
Also, my hands shake a little.
My children live far away, so we see each other online instead.
We also write to each other and send pictures.
It’s so much easier and quicker than going to the post office
every time
[chuckles].
My trouble is all this small text! Why do they write so small?
I know how to make the text size bigger but it doesn’t work with all websites.
Sometimes everything seems to break down – the text
overlaps or goes somewhere else or disappears completely.
Or, I have to scroll sideways to read – I don’t have the time and energy for that.
It’s the same with apps. I made the text bigger on my mobile phone.
I can’t see without doing that on such a small screen.
Most apps work well but not the banking app.
The text on that app is still small,
and I need to use it to log into my bank account.
I already called them
several times about this but nothing happens.
It’s not only reading, though.
When the text is small, all the buttons and links are also small.
Sometimes tiny. Especially on forms,
where you have to click and select all these things -
it’s hard with my hands,
they don’t behave like they used to.
Our grocery store now has an online shop, which is fantastic
because I don’t have to carry all the shopping any more.
The text is big and it has big links and buttons.
It just seems clearer and easier to find things –
everything is where it should be on every page.
Usually, I have trouble remembering things,
like the telephone number, address, and credit card details.
This store remembers from before, so I only need to select the right address
in the text field rather than needing to type it each time.
I wish all websites could be that easy.
You can help 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