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