Learn how people with disabilities use the Web

How does a blind person use a computer? How does a person who is paralyzed from the neck down move a cursor on a screen or click icons and links? How does a deaf-blind person interact with a website? They do so with accessibility tools.

There are just as many ways to use a computer as there are computer users—or at least it seems so when you start to learn about accessibility. To better understand accessibility tools, you can search the Internet for videos demonstrating the technologies. Better yet, visit your local university and talk to students and faculty members with disabilities.

Some examples of what you might find:

• Someone who is totally blind uses software called a screen reader. This can be installed on any computer that runs Windows, Linux, or Mac OS. A screen reader provides spoken feedback when the person performs an action, such as opening the browser window by pressing the Enter key, navigating through a webpage using the Tab key, navigating through menus using the arrow keys, opening an email message, or simply typing. (For reasons that should be obvious, blind people don’t use a mouse.)
• A person with limited vision often relies on screen-magnification software. These solutions can simply increase the size of the text, images, and mouse pointer. Or they can provide more sophisticated enhancements, such as tools that enable the user to change color and contrast, and even to view content through a virtual magnifying glass that can be dragged around the screen with a mouse. Some screen-magnification programs come with an option that gives people spoken information about the items they are pointing at.
• A person with a physical disability that makes typing on a regular keyboard too difficult uses an onscreen keyboard instead. People who can’t move their hands can navigate with head motions rather than with a mouse. An onscreen keyboard can be controlled with a single switch, a head mouse, a head stick, or another accessory that requires little pressure or a minimum number of key presses. Some onscreen keyboards automatically scan through the keys, allowing people to enter their choices by pressing a switch. Other onscreen keyboards offer a “dwell” feature: People move their heads to control the cursor, and enter the text or click links by dwelling on the key of their choice.
• A deaf-blind person interacts with a computer by using a refreshable Braille display. The display is usually controlled by a screen reader. Some modern Braille displays come with a built-in keyboard that allows people to type text, click items on the screen, and read the content of webpages, spreadsheets, text documents, and so forth.

A website that is not designed to accommodate accessibility tools presents significant roadblocks to site visitors with disabilities—and they’re not likely to remain visitors for long.

Your goal, then, should be to ensure that your site can be experienced by people using computer accessibility tools. This means following guidelines for accessible design, which we’ll touch on in the next section. It also means being aware of frustrating experiences like these:

• A blind person, after carefully crafting her comment on a blog entry, cannot submit it because she can’t read the misshapen letter-number combination preceded by instructions such as “Please enter the characters you see in the box below.” Called CAPTCHAs in computing jargon, these letter-number combinations are intended—in the awkward words of too many sites—to “prove that you are human” and not a computer pretending to be a person. (Incidentally, many sighted people have problems reading these, too.)
• A deaf person cannot understand a video that everyone is raving about, because it provides no closed captions.
• A person who has limited motor skills but uses a keyboard to navigate cannot reach the content on the homepage of a website because it takes so long to tab through all the menus. (A Skip to content link would take him directly through the menus, allowing him to enjoy the site.)

Consider the many ways people access your site, and make sure that the site is designed so that anyone can use it.