Physical disabilities & Virtual design

When most people talk to me about website/software designs and their compliance with WCAG standards, they mostly limit the conversation to visual or hearing disabilities. Compliance covers people with vision and hearing impairments, cognitive/neurological impairments and motor impairments (physical).

For people with vision impairments, we discuss contrast and colors and screenreaders; for aural impairments, we discuss captioning and visual-only animation. Sometimes the discussion will moves to a cognitive disorder, and how some users might benefit from shorter sentences or consistent layouts and color coding.

I cannot recall a conversation about online accessibility that naturally veered into discussing physical disabilities.

As a virtual world that seems limitless, the concept of web access feels so completely disconnected to the physical world, that we forget to think about physical disabilities when we're designing.

How are physical disabilities defined?

As defined by W3C, "Physical disabilities, sometimes called 'motor disabilities,' include weakness and limitations of muscular control (such as involuntary movements including tremors, lack of coordination, or paralysis), limitations of sensation, joint disorders (such as arthritis), pain that impedes movement, and missing limbs."

Though we don't think about it, much of our physical abilities determine how we interface with and control the virtual world. So until technology can rely solely on speech controls and brain-implanted controls, we need to think about physical disabilities in our virtual designs.

A closer look at our old friend: the Double-click

Let's take a look at the ubiquitous double-click, an action for which most users don't give any thought. It involves a stable and stationary positioning over a specific click zone on screen, combined with quick repeated and controlled action, within a short amount of time.

These highly coordinated movements can be difficult for someone with a physical disability; a tremor, for example.

While a user has the freedom to configure their own mouse for timing, or purchase a different mouse, having a large enough click zone is important. Precise positioning can take extra time, even with a large enough click zone, so having a timed page could cause extra frustration and unnecessary stress – especially if any content is deleted or the process has multiple steps to resume. Sites using a CAPTCHA process can be particularly difficult when the site does not offer an alternative security function.

Other examples of barriers by W3C

This is only a brief example. W3C lists some examples of barriers for people with physical disabilities, the gist of these:

• Not providing full keyboard support.
• Insufficient time limits, such as to fill out online forms.
• Controls without equivalent text alternatives.
• Missing orientation cues, page structure, and other navigational aids.
• Inconsistent, unpredictable, and overly complicated navigation.

No shortcuts & Share your solutions

As ever, there are no shortcuts to a perfectly accessible design, especially when other issues such as resource scarcity and security loom large. But design can incorporate usability and accessibility for all users if you think about it early enough and hard enough. Learn solutions to problems and share them with others; ask the same colleagues how they solved problems and see if it works for you. Move accessibility earlier into the design process instead of the fix-it-in-a-rush process.

More resources provided by W3C : "How People with Disabilities Use the Web" : "Tips: Designing for Web Accessibility"

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Christine is a Senior Content Developer at WGU Labs, formerly called the Center for Applied Learning Science. She is a Digital Accessibility Ambassador, and wants everyone talking about online accessibility.