Categories and Characteristics of Disabilities and Associated Barriers (ICT and Physical World) Flashcards
1. Name the main categories of disabilities. 2. Classify specific conditions under the appropriate disability category or categories. 3. Describe the accessibility challenges faced by people with disabilities of a given category.
What are the main categories of disabilities?
Visual, Auditory, Deaf-blindness, Speech, Compound
What is a visual disability?
- Sensory disability
- Can range from partial vision loss, loss of visual acuity (increased or decreased sensitivity to specific or bright colors) to complete or uncorrectable loss of vision in one or both eyes.
What is blindness?
- Nearly complete loss of vision
- Some cannot see anything
- Some can perceive light vs dark or the general shapes of large objects
- Some cannot read text or recognize people by sight
Globally, how many people have a visual disability?
- At least 2.2 billion
- At least 1 billion have a vision impairment that could have been prevented or hasn’t been addressed
Globally, what are the leading causes of vision impairment?
- Uncorrected refractive errors
- Cataracts
How old are the majority of people with vision impairments?
Over 50 years of age
What is Color Blindness?
- Sensory disability
- Impairs ability to distinguish between certain color combinations
What are the most common forms of color blindness, and who is most affected?
- Difficulty or inability to distinguish reds and greens
- Males are most affected (1 in every 12 males)
Do all kinds of color blindness equally effect all genders?
- No
- Blue-yellow color vision defects affect all genders equally
What is Low Vision?
- Uncorrectable vision loss that interferes with daily activities
- Is “not enough vision to do whatever it is you need to do,” which varies from person to person
- Cannot be corrected with regular glasses, contact lenses, medicine, or surgery
What are some characteristics of people with Low Vision?
- May need magnification to read or discern details
- May experience low contrast, so benefit from high contrast content
- May experience color deficiencies, being unable to distinguish between certain colors.
How many people worldwide have Low Vision?
- About 246 million
- 3.5% of the world’s population
What percent of people with vision impairments live in low income settings?
About 90%
What are some barriers for people with Visual Disabilities?
- Print materials not made available digitally or in braille
- Speakers who don’t provide descriptions to help with visually conveyed information
- Lack of text alternatives for images, controls, and other elements on web sites
- Web sites that cannot be resized without information loss, or cannot be resized at all
- Missing visual navigational aids
- Videos without text or audio alternatives, such as an audio-description track
- Inconsistent or complicated navigation and page functions
- Insufficient visual contrast in content
- Lack of support for color customization
- Lack of full keyboard support
What are auditory disabilities?
- Sensory disabilities
- Range from partial to complete hearing loss
What is Deafness?
Total or near total loss of hearing
What are some characteristics or people who are deaf?
- Difficulty with sounds
- Many, but not all, know sign language
- Sign language may be their first/native language
- May be uncomfortable reading text
- Those who lose hearing later in life may be more comfortable with text than sign language
What does it mean to be Hard of Hearing (HOH)?
- Have hearing loss ranging from mild to severe, who still have some useful hearing
- May communicate with sign language, spoken language, or both
- Most have hearing aids
What are some common characteristics of people who are Hard of Hearing?
- Have partially-impaired hearing in one or both ears
- May be enough residual hearing for an auditory device (such as a hearing aid) to provide enough assistance to process speech
- Has difficulty with sounds
Globally, how many people are estimated to be deaf or hard of hearing?
- 466 million people
- 6.1% of the world’s population
What is an Central Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)?
- Greater than expected difficulty hearing and understanding speech even though no measurable hearing loss exists.
- The inability to interpret, organize, or analyze what is heard.
- Often confused with other disorders like ADHD, language impairment, learning disabilities, social and emotional delays or cognitive deficits.
What are some common characteristics of people with Auditory Processing Disorders?
May have difficulty:
- Locating source of sounds
- Understanding what someone is saying in a loud environment or if there are competing sounds
- Following spoken directions
- Learning songs or instruments
- Paying attention
- Responding in a timely way
- Learning a new language
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Globally, how many people are estimated to have an Auditory Processing Disorder?
5%
What are some barriers for people with auditory disabilities?
- People speaking softly or in large spaces without amplification
- Unavailability of sign language interpretation
- Environments that are loud or present competing sounds
- Requirement of voice for interaction
- Requirement of listening for understanding
- Audio in films or videos without captions or transcripts