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Accessible Library Instruction

What types of disabilities are there?

Credit to UX Collective: Accessibility checklist to design products that people will love and... use  According to WCAG, users may have the following types of disabilities: auditory, cognitive, learning, and neurological, physical, speech, and visual. Now let’s see and what we should do about it:

Auditory

People with auditory disabilities have any type of hearing loss and can’t hear sounds the same way as people without this disability.

Accessibility checklist:

  • Make captions or transcripts available for audio and video content with the possibility to adjust the text size and colors for captions

  • Add options to stop, pause, and adjust the volume

  • Provide alternatives to voice-only interactions

  • Add sign language to supplement important information and text that is difficult to read.

Cognitive, learning, and neurological

A person with cognitive disabilities has difficulties with mental tasks and abilities to learn.

Accessibility checklist:

  • Make sure the navigation is easy, layouts of pages and sentences are well structured. Avoid unusual words

  • Create consistent labels of forms, buttons, and other content parts

  • Ensure the most common functionality works in a predictable way. For example, the radio button assumes the choice of 1 option (not 2 or more), scroll works vertically (not horizontally)

  • Avoid long passages of the text without images, graphs, or other illustrations to highlight the context

  • Provide the possibility to turn off moving, blinking, flickering content, background audio, and animations. For example, in Apple system accessibility preferences there is an option to reduce motion:

Physical

Physical disabilities may affect temporarily or permanently people’s ability to move. These disabilities can be caused by genetic disorders, serious illnesses, or injuries.

Accessibility checklist:

  • Provide full keyboard support

  • Make sure the time limits are sufficient to read and understand the content. For example, if the information is shown in a tooltip or popup which has to disappear after some time, make sure the time before it disappears is long enough

  • Add text alternatives (text under <alt> tag) for images and controls. Text alternatives work as labels and make keyboard and voice navigation easier

  • Implement voice recognition, eye tracking, and other approaches for hands-free interactions.

Speech

People with speech disabilities have any type of speech disorder, where speech is disrupted.

Accessibility checklist:

  • Provide alternatives to voice-only interactions

  • Make sure there are multiple methods of communication listed in the contact information of your site (not just a phone number).

Visual

People with visual disabilities have a decreased ability to see. This group also includes users who can’t see well enough and don’t have access to glasses or contact lenses either temporarily or permanently.

Accessibility checklist:

  • Provide full keyboard support

  • Add text alternatives (text under <alt> tag) for images and controls. Just as for people with physical disabilities, alt text can be used in voice navigation and will be read aloud via VoiceOver software

  • Make sure text size and images can be enlarged or reduced in size using system capabilities and/or сonsider this possibility in the settings of your product

  • Create predictable navigation, clear title

  • Add sufficient contrast

  • Foresee customizing settings for fonts, colors, and spacing

  • Listen to the voice-over while testing your product (you can turn it on in browsers and operating systems), make sure it is understandable and logical.

 

 

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