Accessibility
- Disability - a functional limitation or restriction of an individual's ability to perform an activity
Temporal Disabilities
- Referred to temporarily impared capabilities
| Circumstance | Impaired ability |
|---|---|
| Sick, injured | Cognitive/motor capabilities |
| Driving a car | Attentional bandwidth |
| Underwater diving | Sight, hearing, mobility |
Aging
- Reduced motor coordination
- Visual and hearing impairments
- Loss of memory
Legal Obligations
Canada
- No fedral accessibility legislation pertaining to IT
Ontario
- World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
- Mainly with public sector organizations and large organizations
United States
- Disabilities and Rehabilitation Acts (Section 508)
- All government facilities, services, and communications must be accessible to individuals with disabilities
Accessible User Interfaces
- GUI tools provide hooks to integrate with accessibility functions
- Toolkits provide features that allow you to provide additional information about your interface, individual components, and the functions they serve
- Expose your interface to output modalities (e.g. screen readers)
- Allows accessibility software to control your software using alternative input methodologies
Operating System Support
- Control interface using only keyboard
- Magnify portions of screen
- Increase contrast of screen
- Increase cursor size
- Build-in screen readers
Curb Cut Phenomenon
- A design for people with impariments which benefits everyone
- Sidewalks redesigned for wheelchair also becomes easier for strollers, bicycles etc.
- Cassette tapes were initially designed as a replacement to reel-to-reel tape so visually impaired individuals could use books on tape more easily
- Another example is television CC