Personas of Persons with Disabilities

I recently presented on disability awareness in building accessible websites to a group of interaction designers. At the end, I was asked about examples of a specific person with a disabilities as well as design considerations for that person. This is what I found:

Personas of Persons with Disabilities and Recommended Design Considerations

  • Fluid, a user experience project for open source projects, created the persona of Sara Windsor, a faculty member who is blind and outlines some considerations in designing an accessible user experience for her.
  • Living with Disabilities, profiles for a blind person, low vision, hearing impaired, motor control impaired, and cognitively challenged, with design considerations for each- from the University of Michigan.

Personas of Persons with Disabilities

Regardless of whether or not you use personas, the examples are helpful to go through to better understand accessibility from a different perspective, even though that perspective is that of a make believe person.

If the personas aren’t doing it for you, take a gander at some of these videos and experiences to get a better feel for how persons with disabilities access the web:

Additional Resources

Update:

Icons, Symbols and Cognitive Disabilities

Guideline 1.3 Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example spoken aloud, simpler layout, etc.) without losing information or structure

Draft Guideline 1.3 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 discusses the importance of making information available in a form that can be perceived by the user- either directly or through an assistive technology. For example, if a site uses an image to convey meaning, then the alt text should be present so that it can be seen (in a text-only environment), heard (by a screen reader) or even felt (through a refreshable braille display). This pertains to both presentation and structure.

The technologies mentioned above- text-only browsers, screen readers and electronic braille- all do a good job at presenting information to the appropriate audience. However, what about users with cognitive disabilities? Text read aloud may be helpful in some situations, but what about a graphical representation of content? There are already some efforts in this area with the Communicate: Webwide symbol supported browser that claims to be able to represent over 29,000 words with symbols and while I applaud their efforts, with a Windows-only, proprietary, subscription-based product, I doubt there will be any widespread adoption in the near future.

Perhaps one day there will be an open system that will facilitate the collection and use of symbols in everyday tools. Until then, here are some other project/ideas that are exploring the use of symbols:

Does your mail client support email standards?

Email Standards Project

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.

Online Video Captions

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have announced their participation in the Internet Captioning Forum (ICF) established to promote the use of captioning for online video. They will be working with the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH Boston. You can read quotes from Vint Cerf and other representatives from each of the big four at the National Center for Technology Innovation regarding the effort.

I am neither deaf or hard or hearing, but the captions are almost always on when the television is on in our home. I enjoy the viewing experience and miss fewer words mumbled here and there when I can look down and glance at the words when needed.

Google video currently provides detailed instructions on adding captioning to videos. Additionally, in the Google Video Help Center, this questions is asked, “Do you generate captions/subtitles for my video?” and the answer they provide is a promising “Not at this time.” They also have a section where you can view examples of captioned videos.

NCAM Press Release

(hat tip: The Assistive Technology Blog)

Alt Text, Less Can be More

Aaron Cannon at NorthTemple.com offers insight from the perspective of a blind user on the importance of alt text. First from Aaron, as quoted by Ted Boren:

For some reason, some folks get it into their heads that being blind is really terrible and the only way our lives can be whole is for us to have all the pretty pictures in the world described to us. Where, in actuality, most blind folks couldn’t care less about most of it.

Aaron then expounds:

…if there was a picture of a man using a particular product, I’m really not interested in hearing “picture of a man looking pleased as punch to be using the new ultra-lite USB hair drier,” or worse, “picture of a man.” I really don’t care about what image the designers chose to use as eye-candy. I can’t see them, and descriptions of meaningless images just waste my time and delay my getting to the information I’m really interested in.

Read the entire post for an apt comparison of web accessibility to bread making. Thanks Aaron, I’ll think twice the next time I feel an urge to wax poetic in my alt text.

Accessibility guidelines make clear that null alt text should be used for images that do not convey meaning, decorative images. Is the point at which an image goes from meaningful to meaningless unclear to anyone else?

Tactile Video Displays

a tactile graphic display device

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has licensed a technology for the commercialization of a tactile graphic display device. The device promises users who are blind the ability to feel images from any number of sources on a refreshable braille display. The technology has been in development for awhile, but commercialization is a significant step forward.

From the press release:

ELIA Life Technology Inc. of New York, N.Y., licensed for commercialization both the tactile graphic display device and fingertip graphic reader developed by NIST researchers. The former, first introduced as a prototype in 2002, allows a person to feel a succession of images on a reusable surface by raising some 3,600 small pins (actuator points) into a pattern that can be locked in place, read by touch and then reset to display the next graphic in line. Each image—from scanned illustrations, Web pages, electronic books or other sources—is sent electronically to the reader where special software determines how to create a matching tactile display.

From the ELIA Life Technology About Us page:

The ELIA Life team strives to improve the quality of life of visually impaired persons and their family members by enabling the visually impaired to live, work, learn, and communicate with greater independence and dignity.

It appears that they market the tactile alphabet as an alternative to braille and claim that, “only three percent of legally blind Americans can read Braille”

I don’t know how long before this technology will be made widely available, but it raises a couple of interesting questions:

  1. Would you prefer effective alt text to a tactile graphic display device that worked?
  2. Will this type of technology one day be used as an excuse for people not do use alt tags?

More on the technology: NIST ‘Pins’ Down Imaging System for the Blind

(via WebbAlert)

Access to the Web for People with Intellectual Disabilities

If you are looking for information on how to make craft more accessible websites for persons with cognitive disabilities, here are a few posts on the topic:

All of the above guidelines and suggestions are essential and relevant to any discussion on web accessibility. That said, is is also important to take a step back and look at who we are talking about when we refer to users with intellectual disabilities.

Intellectual disability is also referred to as mental retardation, developmental disability or cognitive disability (which seems to be the preferred term in the web design world) and has elicited a number of “official” definitions. Intellectual disability is found with disabilities such as Down syndrome, Fragile X, autism, and cerebral palsy, among many others.

Who do you think of when discussing intellectual disability? I think first of my two younger brothers Patrick and Dallin who were both born with Down syndrome. You may think of a family member, a coworker or someone at your local grocery store and each person you think of may have a wide variety of different characteristics and abilities.

Undoubtedly when a person with an intellectual disability gets online, there are many barriers to be overcome. However, there are also many barriers that keep people with intellectual disabilities from getting online in the first place. Here are just a few:

  • Basic computer skills

    For many persons with intellectual disabilities a decision is made early on whether to focus more on academic skills or on functional skills to best prepare for life after graduation. Basic computer skills may be entirely left out of the curriculum.

  • Living arrangements

    For any number of reasons, a significant number of people with intellectual disabilities live in long-term care facilities where computers and/or the internet may not be available.

  • Expectations, or rather lack thereof

    Low expectations may come from the person with a disability, a family member or caregiver and can be very powerful.

  • Poverty

    “In the year 2004, an estimated 28.2 percent of civilian non-institutionalized, men and women with a work limitation, aged 18-64 in the United States lived in families with incomes below the poverty line.” (www.disabilitystatistics.org– login required). If you had to choose between paying for electricity or your Internet service, which would you choose? (In case you are waffling on that one, remember that it is difficult to turn on a computer without electricity…)

Fortunately, there are some electronic and societal ramps in place to help overcome some of these barriers- government and private programs that provide financial and job training support, specialized education programs, self-advocacy efforts and a rapid expansion of unintentionally intellectual disability friendly websites. Persons with intellectual disabilities may or may not be able to do their banking online just yet, but the explosion of visual media has opened door for all kinds of accessible online experiences. I’ll refer again to my brother Dallin who has become extremely proficient in using a variety of online tools to find images, audio and video of his much beloved Power Rangers.

Let’s keep working on making the web accessible for everyone, but on occasion it is helpful to stop and consider just who that ‘everyone’ is.

To close, a quote from a paper produced by the Internet Society titled Global Trends that will Impact Universal Access to Information Resources:

The benefits of addressing the problems of inaccessible design extend to include all people, including the community of people with disabilities. (About 10% of the world’s population are disabled, with a disproportionate amount falling into the poor population in emerging economies). It is imperative that there be some way to insure that people with disabilities in the developing world are not separated from everyone else. There must not be even more of a Digital Divide opened between people with disabilities and the efforts to provide Internet access to all in emerging economies. Once it is understood that accessible design is always in synch with low technology solutions, then big steps can be made to help everyone gain access to the information society.

See Also:

Using Symbols to Access the Web

Picture of the Webwide Browser

From the AT TechNET @ VCU: Assistive Technology Blog, a link to Communicate: Webwide, the first symbol-supported web browser. Everything happens in the browser where you can view pages in normal view, with plain text or using symbols. Their icon library contains over 29,000 words. It also reads any text that you highlight.

Is this type of technology the answer for some users with cognitive disabilities? What about a potential user who can’t access your material even when you have gone great lengths to simplify your writing. Also, while individual sites may provide their own visual elements to represent different ideas, is their value is having a standard set of icons? Perhaps the ideas would be to allow users to associate symbols with the words themselves, or at least have the option to override the default icon.

Communicate: Webwide is provided on a subscription model and is PC-only (30-day demo available).

Does it work with any site? Probably not, from their guidelines:

While Webwide interprets clear, well-written HTML; some layouts and styles will be more effective than others. To this end, we will be producing guidelines for web designers who would like to make their information accessible through Webwide.

Hopefully their guidelines are in line with already established web standards and guidelines.

The Other Web Accessibility 2.0

There is plenty of discussion happening on the upcoming version 2.0 of the WCAG. Fortunately, there has also been some good discussion regarding impact of the Web 2.0-volution on accessibility. The rush to ajaxify user interactions and the opening of the floodgates of user contributed floodgates has not necessarily been a good thing for accessibility.

Bruce Lawson noted his concerns back in 2005:

I also worry about accessibility. It strikes me that people are so busy adding extra Ajax loveliness that the separatestripped-down “html-only” versions they offer are unthinkingly accepted as a legitimate sop to people with disabilities. We reject separate “text-only sites” in Web 1.0 ; why should we accept them in “Web 2.0″?

Roger Johansson echoes those sentiments (with some good commentary from his readers):

There is some truth to Bruce’s observations, and it would be a sad step backwards if the perceived coolness of “Web 2.0” brings back the old days of non-graceful degradation.

Ian Lloyd comments with a post titled, AJAX, Accessibility & Screen Readers:

There’s something of an oxymoron going on there in the heading. Can you spot it? The words ‘accessibility’ and ‘AJAX’. They really are not the best of bed fellows, as many people have discovered.

Joe Clark provided notes from a presentation titled Build Half a Product: Is Ajax accessible? At all?, including the results of some usability tests on popular Web 2.0 application Basecamp.

There’s more where all of that came from:

Everyone seems to agree that there is a problem. Fortunately there are also some great resources to set you in the right direction if you are working to create an accessible Web 2.0 application:

In this outdated comment on Bruce Lawson’s above post, someone from Wild Apricot states:

Unfortunately, we could not afford to make the system backend support all the accessibility standards because it would mean two or three times more coding (not 10% or 25% – and I am NOT exaggerating). Creating interactive AND usable interfaces is very hard – and I do not know if many developers can manage to do it on their own. Development frameworks and browsers have to help too.

What is your experience in developing accessible Web 2.0 sites or applications? What AJAX/Javascript frameworks do you use that encourage accessible best practices? What are some good examples of accessible Web 2.0 experiences?

Where to Discuss Accessibility- Forums, Mailing Lists and Blogs

Let’s say that you have a burning accessibility question that you are dying to ask someone and your roommate/spouse/pet are no help at all- where do you go? Here are a few good places to start:

If none of those suit your fancy, there are a few other options. Some of the largest web developer communities have forums specifically for accessibility issues, such as the accessibility and usability forum at the Webmaster World and the accessibility forum at Webdeveloper.com. Even if there isn’t a specific forum at your favorite web development form, people are likely still talking about accessibility (from Dev Shed).

Also, while you may not be able to initiate the discussion, there are always lots of great discussions happening at your favorite accessibility blog (thanks Jared) or web magazine.

If you are looking for a more specific category of accessibility, it may be out there somewhere as well. For examples, check out the fairly active Yahoo! Group on Captioning or the Java Access listserv from Sun Microsystems. Similarly, there are a number discussion lists and forums that are specific to a disability population, such as the Computer Use by and for the Blind list

Lastly, don’t miss out on any local groups. There are a number of university and government organizations that provide venues to discuss accessibility issues with people in your own backyard- anyone from the Phillipines?

Where do you go to ask that burning accessibility question?

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