Accessibility – Designing for blind people: 31 guidelines

Ed: we are re-printing the preface to this article. To see the original illustrations, we recommend linking to the source.

From: A Notebook on Interaction Design

Originally published on redish.net

Why Accessibility?

Why should you design Web sites that are both technically accessible and also usable for people with disabilities? Here are six compelling reasons:

1. Disabilities affect many more people than you may think. Worldwide, 750 million people have a disability and three out of every 10 families are touched by a disability [10]. In the United States, one in five people have some kind of disability and one in 10 has a severe disability. That’s approximately 54 million Americans [8]. In 2001, 180 million people worldwide were blind or visually impaired, including 7.7 million people in the United States. This is a substantial consumer segment that should not be ignored.

2. It’s good business. According to the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities [6], the discretionary income of people with disabilities is $175 billion!

3. The number of people with disabilities – and income to spend – is likely to increase. The likelihood of having a disability increases with age, and the overall population is aging.

4. The Web plays an important role and has significant benefits for people with disabilities. Of the 54 million Americans with a disability, 4 in 10 are online [2]. These users spend more time logged on and surfing the Internet than nondisabled users. On average, they spend 20 hours per week online. In addition, they report more positive feelings about their interactions. Our participants told us over and over how the Internet has opened up a whole new world for them and has given them a sense of independence and freedom. For example, P7 is able to read the newspaper herself for the first time. P5, who was unemployed at the time, spends more than 12 hours a day online, listening to the radio, “reading” Web sites, and chatting. According to the Harris Poll, 48 percent of respondents with disabilities reported that the quality of their lives had been significantly improved by the Internet compared to 27 percent of respondents without a disability [2].

5. Improving accessibility improves usability for all users. As you’ll see in the findings and guidelines in this paper, making Web sites work for people who use screen readers takes little extra effort while bringing great benefits for everyone.

6. It’s morally the right thing to do.

The Project
Between November 2002 and February 2003, we observed and listened to 16 blind users as they worked with Web sites using assistive devices that read the screen to them (screen readers). Participants used the screen reader that they work with regularly: 13 used JAWS [3] and three used Window-Eyes [9]. 3

A spokesperson for the U.S. National Federation of the Blind estimates that, in the United States overall, JAWS commands 65 percent of the market in screen readers; Window-Eyes has 35 percent of the market. The 80 percent proportion of JAWS users in our sample reflects the situation in the Washington, D.C., area where JAWS is the software most commonly used by U.S. federal workers.

For the balance of the article, see Accessibility – Designing for blind people: 31 guidelines