Visual Disabilities
These include, but are not limited to, blindness, color blindness, and low vision. Color blindness includes red-green, blue-yellow and total color blindness. Low vision can be caused by eye diseases, such as macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and retinitis pigmentosa. It can also be caused by injury or aging (e.g. blurriness of vision).
Summary of Best Practices
- Describe images
- Use good color contrast and legible fonts
- Use color in combination with shapes and or text when color is an indicator
- Provide transcripts for videos
- Provide descriptive and informative headings
- Provide descriptive and informative links
- Follow a linear and logical layout
- Use proper semantics (e.g. paragraphs, headings, lists, tables)
- Build assuming users can only use a keyboard; do not assume they can use a mouse
- Don't force users to open documents outside webpages for all their information
Stories of Web Users from W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
- Lakshmi, senior accountant who is blind: Lakshmi is blind. She uses a screen reader on her computer and mobile device to interact with online content, including images, form controls, and navigation.
- Lexie, online shopper who cannot distinguish between certain colors (color blindness): Lexie has deuteranopia and protanopia (often called “color blindness”). She has difficulty distinguishing among items that are red, green, orange, and brown, which makes it hard to derive meaning from these colors.
- Marta, marketing assistant who is deaf and blind: Marta is deaf and blind, although she can see small portions of a computer screen when it is significantly enlarged using screen magnification software. She uses captions and transcripts for audio 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.