Digital Accessibility for Long Covid
NARAYANAN PALANI
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Post pandemic, we have an important situation to address-that is long covid conditions and associated digital accessibility to bring everyone supported while using digital technologies. This article aim to explain some critical accessibility enablement to support patients with long covid conditions.
Introduction
According to NHS , there are common symptoms that ranging from fatigue to tinnitus that are due to long covid conditions:
New study of University of York suggests 28% of people who catch COVID-19 will go on to suffer from Long Covid that is 2.8 million until 2024.
Facial Recognition Limitations
Digital apps use facial recognition (Face ID of iPhones) as a mode of authentication and users with cough and rashes may get difficulty while going through these authentications while affected by rashes/cough hence alternative mode of authentications are better to support long covid patients.
Finger Print Limitations
People with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may be particularly susceptible to coronavirus infection and long COVID because their immune system is already in an inflamed and dysregulated state. Henceforth having thumb impression or fingerprint based authentication to mobile devices and apps needs alternative mode of authentication.
Enough Time
Give users time to use the site since people with cognitive impairments may need more time to read instructions, complete forms, and interact with your site in other ways. As per WCAG Guideline 2.2 (“Enough Time"), if users with long covid will encounter a time limit, make sure to provide them with the ability to turn off or adjust the timer. Along the same line, allow users to pause content that moves, blinks, or scrolls.
Enough Reading Level
Use simple language wherever possible, taking long covid based users into account. The Flesch-Kincaid test is one of the most popular metrics for measuring readability and can be useful for analyzing longer content (this blog, for example, is written at an average grade level of about 13, per Flesch-Kincaid, and should be easily understood by most 18 to 19 year olds). Other readability tests can be found on the WCAG Understanding Reading Level page.
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Knowing what are the success criteria for those WCAG guidelines are key for web and native developers to develop applications with long covid patients in mind.Listen to Amit Nalawade on his wonderful conference session on this topic:
Awareness Matters the Most
Use of Accessibility Simulators helps in realising the difficulties faced by users with disability-this is exercised in a recent conference-thanks to Thenmozhi Paramasivam . These simulators are worth a buy for organisations at Univ. of Cambridge and Sim&Skills to get experienced with such disability conditions:
Summary
Many users have an impaired short-term memory. On average people can remember 7 letters or items at the same time. A person with an impaired working memory may be able to remember one to four pieces of information at the same time (depending on the extent of the impairment). If they need to remember other tasks, such as track what they have done, they are likely to make mistakes. With long covid, it is even difficult to remember everything due to brain fog.
Avoid barriers such as:
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