As per the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA, disability is defined as the physical or mental debility which may limit one’s ability to perform primary life activities. People with disabilities have some barriers to access to the places and utilities like normal people and need some special care and support to ensure accessibility. In this article, we may discuss different disabilities affecting individuals and the type of accessibility requirements they have to ensure website accessibility.
AccessiBe – Disabilities explained
- Visual impairment
Visual impairment is the result of the inability to see objects fully or partially. There are different types of vision problems, including partial or full blindness, color blindness, inability to judge distance and depth, or inability to access information through images, print, or videos. Here are some accessibility requirements explained by AccessiBe for websites to ensure compliance with ADA for vision impairment.
- Should use the color palate of the web pages judiciously.
- Use appropriate fonts and text sizes.
- Page layout should be accessibly friendly.
- Ensure clean and straightforward HTML code for screen readers to interpret well.
- Mobility disorders
There are many reasons for mobility impairments like Parkinson’s Disease, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, or even stroke. Mobile-related debilities may end up in difficulty in using arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. Suh problems related to mobility disorders are tremors, loss of neuromotor coordination, paralysis, etc. Accessibility needs are.
- Ensure uncluttered navigation.
- Enable touch screen response and keyboard-only navigation on the web pages.
- Auditory impairment
Hearing disabilities may pose a partial or complete inability to receive sounds and interpret them positively. The symptoms of this condition include deafness of varying degrees, if not full hearing loss. Auditory deficiencies may also cause by malformation of the ear nerves, neurological deficits, etc. In order to ensure website accessibility,
- There should be text transcripts for all audio and video content.
- Don’t dump web pages with multimedia files or graphics that cannot be understood without noise.
- Neurological diseases
Neurological diseases may also cause limited sensory perceptions, compromised motor functions, and mental disabilities. Some of the symptoms of neurological diseases are memory loss, paralysis, tremors, and cognitive disorders. Neurological disorders may result from any underlying disorders like muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer’s disease, degenerative diseases, seizure disorders, epilepsy, etc. In order to ensure website accessibility for this category needs,
- To ensure that the website navigation is consistent and easy.
- There should not be any flashy elements or confusing text on the pages.
- Some people may have a learning disability, too; for them, the website should have short straight text.
Along with these, there are many people out there with cognitive disabilities, medical concerns, and psychological disorders too. Considering this fact, the need for website accessibility is increasing a big way lately. Along with the government websites and public information portals, commercial websites are taking initiatives to ensure accessibility compliance. You can avail services and tools from providers like AccessiBe to make your business also compliant with the ADA rules.
