How People with Disabilities Use the Web

The following scenarios show people with different kinds of disabilities using assistive technologies and adaptive strategies to access the Web. In some cases the scenarios show how the Web can make some tasks easier for people with disabilities.

Please note that the scenarios do not represent actual individuals, but rather individuals engaging in activities that are possible using today's Web technologies and assistive technologies. The reader should not assume that everyone with a similar disability to those portrayed will use the same assistive technologies or have the same level of expertise in using those technologies. In some cases, browsers, media players, or assistive technologies with specific features supporting accessibility may not yet be available in an individual's primary language. Disability terminology varies from one country to another, as do educational and employment opportunities.

» Online shopper with color blindness (user control of style sheets)
» Reporter with repetitive stress injury (keyboard equivalents for mouse-driven commands; access-key)
» Accountant with blindness (appropriate markup of tables, alternative text, abbreviations, and acronyms; synchronization of visual, speech, and braille display)
» Classroom student with dyslexia (use of supplemental graphics; freezing animated graphics; multiple search options)
» Retiree with aging-related conditions, managing personal finances (magnification; stopping scrolling text; avoiding pop-up windows)
» Teenager with deaf-blindness, seeking entertainment (user control of style sheets; accessible multimedia; device-independent access; labelled frames; appropriate table markup)

Mr. Lee wants to buy some new clothes, appliances, and music. As he frequently does, he is spending an evening shopping online. He has one of the most common visual disabilities for men: color blindness, which in his case means an inability to distinguish between green and red.

He has difficulty reading the text on many Web sites. When he first starting using the Web, it seemed to him the text and images on a lot of sites used poor color contrast, since they appeared to use similar shades of brown. Eventually he realized that many sites were using colors that were indistinguishable to him because of his red/green color blindness. In some cases the site instructions explained that discounted prices were indicated by red text, but all of the text looked brown to him. In other cases, the required fields on forms were indicated by red text, but again he could not tell which fields had red text.

Mr. Lee found that he prefered sites that used sufficient color contrast, or redundant information for color. The sites did this by including names of the colors of clothing as well as showing a sample of the color; and by placing an asterix (*) in front of the required fields in addition to indicated them by color.

After additional experimentation, Mr. Lee discovered that on some sites the colors were controlled by style sheets and that he could turn these style sheets off with his browser or override them with his own style sheets. But on sites that did not use style sheets he couldn't override the colors.

Eventually Mr. Lee bookmarked a series of online shopping sites where he could get reliable information on product colors, and not have to guess at which items were discounted.

Mr. Jones is a reporter who must submit his articles in HTML for publishing in an on-line journal. Over his twenty-year career, he has developed repetitive stress injury (RSI) in his hands and arms, and it has become painful for him to type. He uses a combination of speech recognition and an alternative keyboard to prepare his articles, but he doesn't use a mouse. It took him several months to become sufficiently accustomed to using speech recognition to be comfortable working for many hours at a time. There are some things he has not worked out yet, such as a sound card conflict that arises whenever he tries to use speech recognition on Web sites that have streaming audio.

He has not been able to use the same Web authoring software as his colleagues, because the application that his office chose for a standard is missing many of the keyboard equivalents that he needs in place of mouse-driven commands. To activate commands that do not have keyboard equivalents, he would have to use a mouse instead of speech recognition or typing, and this would re-damage his hands at this time. He researched some of the newer versions of authoring tools and selected one with full keyboard support. Within a month, he discovered that several of his colleagues have switched to the new product as well, after they found that the full keyboard support was easier on their own hands.

When browsing other Web sites to research some of his articles, Mr. Jones likes the access key feature that is implemented on some Web pages. It enables him to shortcut a long list of links that he would ordinarily have to tab through by voice, and instead go straight to the link he wants.

Ms. Laitinen is an accountant at an insurance company that uses Web-based formats over a corporate intranet. She is blind. She uses a screen reader to interpret what is displayed on the screen and generate a combination of speech output and refreshable braille output. She uses the speech output, combined with tabbing through the navigation links on a page, for rapid scanning of a document, and has become accustomed to listening to speech output at a speed that her co-workers cannot understand at all. She uses refreshable braille output to check the exact wording of text, since braille enables her to read the language on a page more precisely.

Much of the information on the Web documents used at her company is in tables, which can sometimes be difficult for non-visual users to read. However, since the tables on this company's documents are marked up clearly with column and row headers which her screen reader can access, she easily orients herself to the information in the tables. Her screen reader reads her the alternative text for any images on the site. Since the insurance codes she must frequently reference include a number of abbreviations and acronyms, she finds the expansions of abbreviations and acronyms the first time they appear on a page allows her to better catch the meaning of the short versions of these terms.

As one of the more senior members of the accounting staff, Ms. Laitenen must frequently help newer employees with their questions. She has recently upgraded to a browser that allows better synchronization of the screen display with audio and braille rendering of that information. This enables her to better help her colleagues, since the screen shows her colleagues the same part of the document that she is reading with speech or braille output.

Ms. Olsen attends middle school, and particularly likes her literature class. She has attention deficit disorder with dyslexia, and the combination leads to substantial difficulty reading. However with recent accommodations to the curriculum she has become enthusiastic about this class.

Her school recently started to use more online curricula to supplement class textbooks. She was initially worried about reading load, since she reads slowly. But recently she tried text to speech software, and found that she was able to read along visually with the text much more easily when she could hear certain sections of it read to her with the speech synthesis, instead of struggling over every word.

Her classes recent area of focus is Hans Christian Andersen's writings, and she has to do some research about the author. When she goes onto the Web, she finds that some sites are much easier for her to use than others. Some of the pages have a lot of graphics, and those help her focus in quickly on sections she wants to read. In some cases, though, where the graphics are animated, it is very hard for her to focus, and so it helps to be able to freeze the animated graphics.

One of the most important things for her has been the level of accessibility of the Web-based online library catalogues and the general search functions on the Web. Sometimes the search options are confusing for her. Her teacher has taught a number of different search strategies, and she finds that some sites provide options for a variety of searching strategies and she can more easily select searching options that work well for her.

Mr. Yunus uses the Web to manage some of his household services and finances. He has some central-field vision loss, hand tremor, and a little short-term memory loss.

He uses a screen magnifier to help with his vision and his hand tremor; when the icons and links on Web pages are bigger, it's easier for him to select them, and so he finds it easier to use pages with style sheets. When he first started using some of the financial pages, he found the scrolling stocktickers distracting, and they moved too fast for him to read. In addition, sometimes the pages would update before he had finished reading them. Therefore he tends to use Web sites that do not have a lot of movement in the text, and that do not auto-refresh. He also tended to "get stuck" on some pages, finding that he could not back up, on some sites where new browser windows would pop open without notifying him.

Mr. Yunus has gradually found some sites that work well for him, and developed a customized profile at some banking, grocery, and clothing sites.

Ms. Kaseem uses the Web to find new restaurants to go to with friends and classmates. She has low vision and is deaf. She uses a screen magnifier to enlarge the text on Web sites to a font size that she can read. When screen magnification is not sufficient, she also uses a screen reader to drive a refreshable braille display, which she reads slowly.

At home, Ms. Kaseem browses local Web sites for new and different restaurants. She uses a personal style sheet with her browser, which makes all Web pages display according to her preferences. Her preferences include having background patterns turned off so that there is enough contrast for her when she uses screen magnification. This is especially helpful when she reads on-line sample menus of appealing restaurants.

A multimedia virtual tour of local entertainment options was recently added to the Web site of the city in which Ms. Kaseem lives. The tour is captioned and described -- including text subtitles for the audio, and descriptions of the video -- which allows her to access it using a combination of screen magnification and braille. The interface used for the virtual tour is accessible no matter what kind of assistive technology she is using -- screen magnification, her screen reader with refreshable braille, or her portable braille device. Ms. Kaseem forwards the Web site address to friends and asks if they are interested in going with her to some of the restaurants featured on the tour.

She also checks the public transportation sites to find local train or bus stops near the restaurants. The Web site for the bus schedule has frames without meaningful titles, and tables without clear column or row headers, so she often gets lost on the site when trying to find the information she needs. The Web site for the local train schedule, however, is easy to use because the frames on that Web site have meaningful titles, and the schedules, which are laid out as long tables with clear row and column headers that she uses to orient herself even when she has magnified the screen display.

Occasionally she also uses her portable braille device, with an infrared connection, to get additional information and directions at a publicly-available information kiosk in a shopping mall downtown; and a few times she has downloaded sample menus into her braille device so that she has them in an accessible format once she is in the restaurant.

The World Wide Web Consortium was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability.