Motor Disabilities
These include, but are not limited to, hemiplegia, palsy, paraplegia, quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, Lou Gehrig's disease and Parkinson's disease. Many are caused by injury or disease.
Summary of Best Practices
- Provide descriptive and informative headings
- Provide descriptive and informative links
- Follow a linear and logical layout; design for mobile devices first
- Don't force horizontal and vertical scrolling to view specific content; stick to vertical as often as possible
- Use white space to provide enough separation between actionable items
- Separate actionable items from a flier image that require selecting or typing
- Design for text-first; use proper semantics (e.g. paragraphs, headings, lists, tables)
- Build assuming users can only use a keyboard or speech recognition software; do not assume they can use a mouse
- Avoid navigation or interaction that require multiple selects
- Avoid short time out sessions
- Don't force users to open documents outside webpages for all their information
Stories of Web Users from W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
- Ade, reporter with limited use of his arms: Ade was involved in an accident that caused a spinal cord injury, leaving him with limited use of his arms. He often relies only on the keyboard to navigate websites and other digital content.
- Elias, retiree with low vision, hand tremor, and mild short-term memory loss: Elias has low vision, a hand tremor, and short-term memory loss. Combined, these traits make using digital technology difficult, although consistent layouts and being able to adjust text size help.