Introduction
There are many reasons why someone may experience varying degrees of visual, auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, or speech issues that would interfere with their ability to use the web or IT products. Some may have disabilities from birth, an illness, disease, or accident. Some may develop impairments with age. Some may be temporarily impaired; others may have permanent or worsening conditions.
Types of Disabilities
Rather than try to list every cause of every impairment, we design for a few major categories as broadly as possible.
- Auditory Disabilities
- Cognitive and Neurological Disabilities
- Physical and Motor Disabilities
- Speech Disabilities
- Visual Disabilities
- Complex or Compound Disabilities
- Aging and growing old
Additional Resources
Web Accessibility – Types of Disability by Coolfields Consulting outlines various types of disabilities (as listed above) as well as what features on the web can make life difficult for individuals with those types of disabilities.
- Disability impacts ALL of US infographic by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (2012). Scroll past the image to get to the transcript.
- Prevalence and Most Common Causes of Disability Among Adults United States, 2005 by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
- The Most Common Disabilities Seen In School by Teach-nology
- Why “Special Needs” is Not Helpful by Rebecca Cokley on Medium