Universal Design for the Physical World Flashcards
Our Designs Disable People
We built a world that caters to the young and fully-able-bodied. In part, this is because designers themselves tend to be young and fully-able-bodied. Our designers have created a world that assumes a certain kind of physical sameness and neglects our natural physical diversity. Usually this neglect is unintentional. Designers aren’t trying to be mean. They just tend to not think about the needs of people with disabilities because they aren’t always aware of what those needs are.
Universal Design in the Physical World
The physical world is all around us. We can immediately grasp the immediacy of the challenges. Some of the examples (like sidewalks, doors, drinking fountains, etc.) may not seem at first to be relevant to web accessibility, but trust us on this one: thinking about these types of situations will help you understand the real nature of the problem.
Rules and regulations
Rules and regulations vary among countries. Many countries have minimum building standards for design and construction, but simply complying with minimum standards usually results in the need for accommodations. Countries often have best practice UD guidelines to support their minimum standard to better support accessibility.
Universal Design Principles Background
In 1997, a group of architects led by Ronald Mace at North Carolina State University called into question approaches to designing buildings, products, and environments. Mace and his group of architects realized that individuals are diverse and design of physical environments and products should be adaptable to individuals’ needs. Together, the architects concluded that physical spaces and products should be “universal”.
The Seven Principles of Universal Design
- Principle One: Equitable Use
- Principle Two: Flexibility in Use
- Principle Three: Simple and Intuitive Use
- Principle Four: Perceptible Information
- Principle Five: Tolerance for Error
- Principle Six: Low Physical Effort
- Principle Seven: Size and Space for Approach and Use
Principle One: Equitable Use
The design of the product or environment should be useful and marketable to everyone regardless of his or her abilities. If possible, everyone should be able to use the environment or product in the same manner. If identical uses are not provided, then equivalent options should be provided.
Principle Two: Flexibility in Use
The design of the product or environment should provide people with a variety of options for use of its features. The environment or product should be adaptable to an individual’s preferences and abilities.
Principle Three: Simple and Intuitive Use
The purpose of the product or environment’s features should be easy to understand. A person’s background, language, or experience should not hinder his or her understanding of how to use the product or navigate the environment.
Principle Four: Perceptible Information
Information about the product or environment’s design should be communicated effectively and should be perceivable to everyone. A person’s sensory abilities should not hinder him or her from receiving information. Information should be presented in different formats to increase effective communication to individuals with diverse abilities.
Principle Five: Tolerance for Error
The design of the product or environment should reduce the chances of accidents or hazards from occurring. The design should also anticipate any unintentional actions that may occur during use.
Principle Six: Low Physical Effort
The design of the product or environment should require little to no physical effort to use. A person should be able to use the product or navigate the environment comfortably without feeling fatigued during use or after use.
Principle Seven: Size and Space for Approach and Use
Sufficient space should be provided in the design so that it allows anyone to use the design features regardless of physical build or physical abilities.
Accessible Sidewalk Navigation
An accessible sidewalk is one that, at a minimum:
is broad enough to allow people in wheelchairs to navigate and pass by others
is flat enough to make wheelchair navigation feasible
has no obstacles for wheelchair users or for blind users to bump into
has clear, predictable boundaries making navigation by the blind feasible
has curb cuts to allow wheelchair access to and from the sidewalk to other surfaces
is relatively straight, to not cause confusion for blind users
Inaccessible Sidewalk Navigation
By way of contrast, a bumpy, broken sidewalk presents some real accessibility challenges. People in wheelchairs may not be able to navigate over the bumps and broken edges. Blind pedestrians may trip on the bumps and cracks.
Construction along the sidewalk path can be another serious problem, making the sidewalk impassable to people with mobility or visual impairments. Construction zones can be very dangerous for blind people to navigate.
Cobblestone surfaces are nostalgically beautiful, but they are also difficult for people in wheelchairs, people who use walkers, canes, or who experience other mobility challenges.
Curb cuts
Curb cuts are one of the most basic accessibility enhancements for sidewalks. A curb cut is a ramp graded down from the top surface of the sidewalk down to the surface level of the street, creating an unbroken transition to make it easier for wheeled devices—like wheelchairs, strollers, bicycles and carts—to navigate.
Bumped and Ridged Tiles
Bumped tiles at the edge of the sidewalk or near obstacles can help to warn blind pedestrians and keep them safe. Blind people can feel the bumps with their feet or with their cane.
Ridges in the sidewalk can help guide blind people who use canes along the sidewalk or hallway path, and to important destinations, such as elevators, building entrances, etc.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Sidewalks:
Principle 1, Equitable Use
Sidewalks that are wheelchair accessible and have curb cuts that orient people who are blind, assist people with motor disabilities and people who walk with objects such as carts and strollers
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Sidewalks:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Detectable warnings built into curb cuts that warn people who are blind that they are approaching a street
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Sidewalks:
Principle 6, Low Physical Effort
Sidewalks that are smooth and absent of bumps and cracks
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Sidewalks:
Principle 7, Size and Space for Approach and Use
Width of sidewalk allows for use of assistive technologies (e.g., rollators, wheelchairs)
“Unvisitable” Houses
The vast majority of single family homes, townhomes, and row houses in western countries have steps leading up to the front door. This means that if you have a friend who uses a wheelchair, there is no way for your friend to come visit you and enter into your house independently. You, or someone else, will need to help your friend up the stairs. Or, if your friend is in an electric wheelchair, which can weigh hundreds of pounds, chances are you simply won’t invite your friend over, because there is no way to get your friend in and out of your house.
Universal Design for Entrances
One way to get around the problem of steps is to eliminate the steps altogether. Many modern commercial buildings have done just that. This kind of design allows for easy access for everyone. No one is excluded.
Ramps
A ramp is another way to make an entrance accessible to a wheelchair. Ramps plus steps give people an option to choose between the two ways of approaching the front entrance. Ramps take up quite a bit of space, so they are not as elegant in some ways as a simple flat entrance, but ramps are an acceptable option.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Building Entrances:
Principle 1, Equitable Use
Same entrance to the building for all people (instead of a main entrance for people who can walk up stairs and a separate entrance for people in wheelchairs)
Ramps built into stairs – not separate from stairs (sleek, modern universal design)
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Multi-Level Buildings:
Principle 1, Equitable Use
Elevators provided for access to multiple levels in buildings that can be used by a wide variety of people
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Multi-Level Buildings:
Perceptible Information
Buttons on elevators that are tactile or have braille on them
Visual and audio feedback that announces each floor level
Doorknob Designs
A classic rounded doorknob will be inaccessible to people with weak grip, people with quadriplegia, or people without hands.
A lever doorknob will be significantly more accessible to a wider range of people. People with no hands may be able to use a shoulder or other body part to push on the lever. People with weak grips may be able to put the weight of their hand on the door and push down.
Alternatives to Doorknobs
One solution would be to install a push button that opens the door automatically. If positioned well, a person with quadriplegia could push on the button with the electric wheelchair, allowing the person to pass through the doorway independently.
Door Thresholds
Door thresholds can be almost as bad as steps. Tall thresholds are bad for people in wheelchairs, who may not be able to push or power their chair over the threshold. They’re also potentially bad for people who are blind, who may trip on them. Lower thresholds don’t present as much of a problem, but they could still trip up an unsuspecting blind person.
Doorbells
Doorbells present some of the same problems as doorknobs. People with quadriplegia can’t push them. People without hands may or may not be able to push them, depending on how the doorbell is designed. People who are blind don’t know if a door has a doorbell or not, without feeling around. Doorbells aren’t always placed in the same location, so it is a guessing game when walking up to an unfamiliar door.
What about deaf people? If they’re inside the house, how will they hear when a doorbell rings? The answer is that they won’t. There is a workaround though. Doorbells can be hooked up to lights instead of to chimes. When a visitor presses the doorbell, the lights flash or blink.
Doorbells can also be programmed to send a signal to a device that a person wears, such as a cell phone, which can vibrate and/or flash a light
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Doorways:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Doorbells that have lights as well as audio cues
Doorbells that can be programmed to send vibrating signals to a device
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Doorways:
Principle 6, Low Physical Effort
Doors that have lever handles that require less effort to operate
Electronic doors with sensors and flat entryways that everyone can use
Bathrooms
What makes a bathroom inaccessible? The list is pretty long. Here are a few of the main ones:
tight corners that make wheelchair navigation difficult or impossible
sinks that don’t allow wheelchair access underneath
faucets that require the use of hands, especially if they require a good grip
toilets that are too high or too low to slide over from a wheelchair
bathroom stalls with no room for a wheelchair
bathroom stalls without handgrips to assist in sliding onto the toilet
toilet paper and paper towel dispensers that are placed too high or too low, or with obstacles in the way
toilet paper or paper towel dispensers that require a strong grip
Universal Design of Bathrooms and Fixtures
When done right, a single bathroom can serve the needs of people of different levels of ability and disability. Below is an image of a bathroom with lots of room for a wheelchair, plus bars on the wall to allow a person to grip while transitioning out of the wheelchair onto the toilet.
Here is a sink designed to allow wheelchair access underneath, as well as allow for stability by letting users grip the bars on the sides.
A hands-free faucet allows people to wash their hands without having to grip the faucet handles or levers.
Bathroom Labels
Blind people can’t see the labels on the doors. What happens if they walk into the bathroom the were not intending? Yeah, that’s a problem. How can we fix it? One way would be to provide unisex bathrooms. That way it wouldn’t matter which bathroom they use.
Of course, that only really works in single-user bathrooms, unless we suddenly change our social expectations around bathrooms, which isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
In multi-user bathrooms, the main solution is to use braille on the signs. We’re still faced with the limitation that not all blind people can read braille, but this at least gets us closer. It would help if the icons of the woman and the man and the letters were also raised into tactile shapes, to make it easier to distinguish between the two labels for those who don’t read braille.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Bathrooms:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Bathroom labels that are both visual and tactile
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Bathrooms:
Principle 6, Low Physical Effort
Bathrooms that serve the needs of diverse individuals by providing hands-free faucets, automatic flushing, and handles for support
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Bathrooms:
Principle 7, Size and Space for Approach and Use
Bathrooms that provide sufficient space for maneuverability of body and assistive technologies
Drinking Fountains
Drinking fountains fit many of the same accessibility design patterns as things we have already described, like faucets, sinks, and doorknobs. You need to be able to roll a wheelchair under the drinking fountain. You need to be able to turn on the water with minimal pressure, and perhaps without hands. Additionally, you need the fountain to be reachable by very short people, such as people with dwarfism or children.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Drinking Fountains:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Drinking fountains that are placed at varying heights to accommodate different users
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Drinking Fountains:
Principle 6, Low Physical Effort
Drinking fountains that have auto-detecting features
Transportation Systems
Transportation systems can be quite complex, and the accessibility problems they present also can be complex. To start off with, we should emphasize that public transportation systems are vital for many people with disabilities. Public transportation makes travel possible for people who would probably not be able to travel on their own. Public transportation is not an enemy of accessibility; it is one of the greatest allies. It’s just that the system has to be designed with accessibility in mind, or else all of the problem-solving potential of public transportation systems is wasted.
Buying a Ticket or Farecard
Farecard machines present a number of difficulties to users with disabilities. Blind people can’t read them. Short people or people in wheelchairs may not be able to reach to the top of them. People with quadriplegia may not be able to interact with them. The contrast between the text and the background color may not be high enough for people with low vision, or the text may be too small. People with cognitive disabilities may be confused by the machine.
All of these can be overcome with good design, but many public transportation systems don’t have machines with enough accessibility features to benefit everyone. Users with disabilities will likely have to depend on the help of family, friends, station attendants, or strangers who happen to be willing to help out.
Buy Ticket or Farecard Online Instead
Now we’re getting to something that affects web accessibility directly. Rather than buy a ticket or farecard through a machine, we can make it possible to buy online through a web site. We could set it up to allow users to print their own farecards, or we could send reusable plastic farecards to them in the mail. When the balance on the card runs down, we could allow them to add more money to it through the web site, or we could allow users to set up auto-deductions from their bank account so that the balance never goes below a pre-determined threshold.
There are a lot of options. By making this available online, we have the opportunity to bypass some of the inherent accessibility difficulties of physical machines.
The catch is that the web site must be accessible, or it will not be of any benefit to users with disabilities.
Turnstiles and Gates
Once passengers purchase their farecards of subway systems, they need to enter past the turnstiles or gates. Some turnstiles, like the ones on the New York City subway are very narrow. Passengers with luggage or strollers may not be able to use the main turnstiles at all. In fact, even overweight customers will find the turnstiles so narrow that they are an uncomfortable fit. The Washington DC Metro system has narrow gates as well, but every exit has at least one wide gate to allow for wheelchairs and other large objects (or people!).
Train Platforms
Train platforms can be dangerous places. People can step off the platform and injure themselves, even if no train is coming. To help blind people avoid injury, bumped tiles like the ones used on sidewalk intersections can be used to alert people of the platform edge.
Train Arrival Announcements
Many train and subway systems have signs above the platform telling passengers when the trains will arrive. This is helpful to everyone except passengers who are blind or who have low vision. To be helpful to passengers with visual impairments, a speaker system would need to announce the same information.
Or, in a nod to more modern methods, mobile devices could receive real-time updates from a central server and blind people could listen to these updates on their phones, tablets, or other devices.
Train Door Visibility
People with low vision may have a hard time finding the doors on the train if the doors look too much like the rest of the train. Passengers with low vision could wait until the doors open, and then perhaps follow other people to the open doors, but it would still be better to design the doors to be obviously different from the rest of the train. In the example below, bright red doors help to distinguish them from the glass and white frames to either side.
Minding the Gap
The London Tube is famous for the phrase “mind the gap.” That’s because on many of the train platforms there really is a large gap between the platform and the train doors.
At some stations you need to step up. In others you need to step down. Some require stepping over a large gap that people could fall into and hurt themselves. You don’t want to do that.
Wheelchairs and strollers have a difficult time navigating the wide or tall gaps at some of the stations. This problem is not unique to the London Underground. Many other older subway and train systems have essentially the same problem. They were designed before widespread awareness of the importance of disability access to public transportation.
Route Maps and Guides
Blind people and people with low vision want to know where the stations are, even if they can’t see them. Tactile maps can be one way to present the information, as shown in this photo of a tactile map of the Stuttgart, Germany train system. The system is presented on a metal surface with raised lines representing the train routes, and with braille labels and explanations.
Online Access to Routes and Information
The same type of information can be presented online, on the main website of the transportation system. The online version wouldn’t allow for a tactile interface, which would be one disadvantage, but it would still allow users to obtain lists of the stops and intersections on each of the routes, and other related information. One of the advantages of an online version is that people could access it anytime, anywhere. They wouldn’t have to travel to the train station, find the map, and spend time feeling it on location.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Transportation Systems:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Both audible and visual arrival announcements
Transportation systems that allow mobile devices to provide alerts regarding information and announcements
High contrast colors on doors that distinguish doors from the rest of the environment
Transportation systems that provide tactile route maps and guides and enlarged maps and guides that are simple and easy to understand
Detectable warnings and lights along the edges of platforms
Taxis
Most taxis are not accessible to wheelchairs, making them useless as a way for a person in a wheelchair to get around town. There are special taxis, though, designed for wheelchair access. These taxis typically allow wheelchair entrance through the side or through the back, by means of a ramp that extends from the bed of the taxi to the street or sidewalk.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Transportation Systems:
Principle 7, Size and Space for Approach and Use
Turnstiles and gates that are large enough and wide enough for wheelchairs and various people to use
Fare Counters and… Touchscreens for the Blind?
As soon as riders enter the taxi, the touchscreen comes to life and begins to talk to the riders. One of the things that the touchscreen says is “For visually-impaired access, touch the screen multiple times.” After touching the screen multiple times, an audio menu starts to announce things to the passenger.
With this system in place, people with blindness or low vision can access the fare information independently. They can also swipe their credit card on the computer in the back of the taxi and control the tip. Before, they had to rely on the driver for those functions, and they had to hope the driver was acting honestly and honoring their requests.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Taxis:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Taxis that have wheelchair access
Credit card or cash payment options
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Taxis:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Touchscreens for people who are blind to use to access information about the taxi and fare
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Taxis:
Principle 5, Tolerance for Error
Touchscreens that have larger clickable areas and fonts help prevent people who are visually impaired or have motor disabilities from making mistakes, communicate mistakes, and help users recover from those mistakes
Emergencies
One solution is to provide smoke detectors with bright flashing lights. These will be able to get the attention of a deaf person, as long as the light is flashing in the same room. It may be necessary to install the lights in multiple rooms.
A blind person will be able to hear the alarm just fine, unless the person is also deaf. In that case, the person will need a mobile device that vibrates when a smoke or fire alarm goes off.
Blind people do face another challenge though. They may not know where to find a fire extinguisher, even if it is right in front of them. This is especially true if the fire extinguisher is built into the wall.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Emergencies:
Principle 1, Equitable Use
Emergency exit routes that are accessible and usable for all people
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Emergencies:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Smoke detectors and other alarm systems that have flashing lights and audio sounds
Grocery Stores
shopping challenges
Even if the person is able to enter the store, the experience itself of shopping is inaccessible. Shopping requires grabbing items and putting them into a cart. It requires putting the items on the conveyer belt or counter at the register to purchase them. A person with quadriplegia cannot do these things.
A person with paraplegia can use their hands, but probably cannot get up out of the wheelchair to access items on higher shelves. In principle, if the shelves were lower, a person with paraplegia could shop independently, but that’s not how grocery stores are built. In fact, the shelves near the bottom are also inaccessible. There is a small range in the middle that is ideally accessible to a person in a wheelchair.
Access for People with Visual Disabilities
navigating a store
A person who is blind or who has low vision is not going to be able to see well enough to get around the store to know where to find items. Beyond that, a blind person wouldn’t be able to distinguish items on the shelves, because none of the containers have braille labels. Even if they did, it would take an exceptionally long time to browse a grocery store by feeling all of the labels on everything.
The experience of going to a grocery store is simply not very accessible to a lot of people with different kinds of disabilities.
Buying Groceries Online
Now, in some cities, some grocery stores sell groceries online and provide delivery. A person with quadriplegia, paraplegia, blindness, or low vision could use the appropriate assistive technologies and purchase food online, completely independently, without receiving help from anyone. That’s quite a leap forward for the independence of people with disabilities, especially for those who cannot easily leave the house.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Grocery Stores:
Principle 1, Equitable Use
Shelves, product markers, product information, and prices that can be exposed to portable devices
Orientation and guidance provided in the grocery store for everyone to help find items
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Grocery Stores:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Shelves placed at lower heights to accommodate diverse needs of shoppers
Self Check-in/Check-out:
Physical Access
The kiosks are placed at a height that is convenient for most people, but which won’t necessarily work for people in wheelchairs. As with drinking fountains, it can help to place kiosks at different heights to accommodate a wide range of users.
Self Check-in/Check-out:
Touchscreens
Touchscreens create some inherent challenges for people who can’t see them, or for people who have low vision and can’t see them well. It actually is possible to make touchscreens accessible to the blind, as demonstrated by the blind-friendly touchscreen in New York City taxis. Designers have to make the effort to design with blindness in mind, though, because touchscreens designed for sighted people generally don’t include the kinds of features that blind people need, such as audio instructions, very large clickable areas, or gesture-controlled activation.
People without the use of hands, or with no hands, will probably not be able to use a touchscreen kiosk at all.
Self Check-in/Check-out:
Text Size, Button Size, Color, and Contrast
Some parts of the screen may be difficult for a person with low vision to read. Looking at the photo of the kiosk screen above, the date and time are written in very small text at the very top of the screen. In addition to the problem of size, the color contrast of the text against the background is too weak for many people with low vision to be able to read. Providing a magnified version of the interface, or simply increasing the font size and contrast for everyone, would solve the problem.
People with tremors, no fingers, or difficulty with manual dexterity may not be able to click reliably on small buttons. The “Start” button on the screen above is probably large enough. The language buttons along the bottom are smaller. Any buttons smaller than those will likely cause problems for some users. Allowing for large clickable areas on all buttons will help.
Self Check-in/Check-out:
Audio Interface
Some kiosks speak to customers and have a built-in audio interface. That will help people with low vision, and could help people who are blind, as long as the interactive touch components accommodate blind access.
Self Check-in/Check-out: Online Check-in
Flights
Many airlines now offer online check-in systems. Customers can log into the web site, confirm their flight details, and print their boarding pass using their own computer and printer at home. If the website is designed with accessibility in mind, this can allow people with disabilities to go through the process without seeking outside help.
Self Check-in/Check-out:
Mobile Check-in
In addition to regular online check-in, some airlines offer mobile check-in with applications installed on smart phones or tablets. The usual caveat applies: this solution is helpful for people with disabilities only if the software is designed with accessibility in mind.
Grocery Store Self Check-out
Physical access can be a problem. Many touchscreens are placed rather high and behind the counter, making them difficult or impossible to reach from a wheelchair or for short people.
The touchscreens need to have audio interfaces for people with low vision or blindness, and the touchscreen controls need to accommodate visual disabilities. Too many options can appear similar. Many apples look almost identical, for example, especially to someone who cannot see the details well. In principle, the text below each picture could help, but sometimes, the text is too small to be helpful to someone with low vision as another way to distinguish the choices. The buttons may also be close together. A blind person could not use interfaces with too many choices. The screen would need to be divided into larger quadrants, with audio instructions saying things like “touch the upper right corner for ‘Cancel,’ touch the bottom left for ‘Previous,’ touch the bottom right for ‘Next,’” and so on.
Online Grocery Shopping
As mentioned in the previous section, some grocery stores offer online grocery shopping, potentially making it easier for people with disabilities to shop for themselves, without needing to ask for help or depend on other people.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Self Check-in/Check-out:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Kiosks that have both audio and visual touchscreen interfaces to accommodate various users, and controls that accommodate people who are blind or visually impaired
Kiosks that are placed at various heights to accommodate diverse users
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Self Check-in/Check-out:
Principle 5, Tolerance for Error
Larger clickable areas and fonts help prevent users who are visually impaired or have motor disabilities from making mistakes and recover
Signs
Signs can tell us to stay out of dangerous areas. Some people with cognitive disabilities who cannot read well will benefit from signs with visual depictions of the danger. The more visually-intuitive the sign, the easier it will be for the person with a cognitive disability to understand.
Informational and Instructional Signs
Signs can include simple, but important, information, such as whether a business is closed or open. Informational signs may not include any text at all. Or they may include quite a bit of text, explaining how to do things.
For blind people, the signs will be completely invisible to them, so it doesn’t matter if the sign contains text or just images. Blind people will need signs in different formats, such as audio or braille.
Signs as Labels
Signs can label stores and offices, letting us know where things are and what their titles are. Signs can also help us differentiate between two similar things, such as between a restroom for men and a restroom for women.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Signs:
Principle 3, Simple and Intuitive Use
Standardized signs that have depictions that are visually intuitive and communicate important information in a simple manner.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Signs:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Visual signs that also present the same information in audio and braille formats
Signs that are enlarged with high contrasting colors
Printed Materials
There is a whole category of disability often referred to as “print disabilities.” This can include people who are completely blind, people with extremely low vision, people with cognitive disabilities, or others for whom reading is particularly difficult or impossible.
Anything on a printed page is pretty much useless to people in this category. You may as well hand them a blank newspaper for all the good it is going to do.
There is so much print all around us, that it is easy to forget how much of the world is inaccessible to people with print disabilities.
Books
Books are pretty important. They are the basis for much of the information and learning available in this world. They are a record of our collective wisdom over the ages. Making books accessible to people with print disabilities ought to be a high priority.
Fortunately, many books are now available in electronic formats in e-readers, online on web sites, and in many other digital formats. The digitization of books opens new realms of possibility for independent learning and enjoyment for people with print disabilities. When text is in a digital format, it has the potential to be read by screen readers, it can be manipulated by screen magnifiers, and its appearance (color, font, contrast, etc.) can be altered to meet the needs of people with low vision.
Braille
People who are blind may be able to read braille (though not all can), so braille can be an acceptable alternative for some people. There are drawbacks to braille. Braille is expensive to produce. It requires very thick paper, which means that braille books end up being massive, both in terms of size and weight. Can you imagine converting a long book like Les Miserables (approximately 1,488 pages in paperback) into a braille book? You could fill an entire wall with volumes of braille books for that one title.
Business Cards
It is possible to make business cards more accessible to blind people who can read braille by adding braille embossing to the card. The card shown below has print on one side and braille on the other. Due to space limitations, the braille contains only the email and phone number. Even so, the most basic information is available to blind people who can read braille, compared to a completely flat card that is not at all useful to a blind person.
A person with low vision would still have difficulty reading this business card. To make business cards more accessible to people with low vision, the print would need to be much larger. In fact, you would probably want a separate version of the card without braille, because the braille can interfere with the readability of the text on the front.
Or, in this digital age, a better alternative to printed business cards may be to simply send the person a quick email or text message using your phone.
Money
Money can be a particular problem for people who are blind or who have low vision, especially in the United States, where all of the bills are the same size and texture. A blind person can’t tell them apart easily, though there are smartphone apps that can distinguish between them, and they can also be folded in particular ways based on the denomination. However, often they may need to rely on the honesty of other people when buying things with cash at retail locations, such as when getting change back.
People with low vision often have a hard time telling the bills apart too. Old paper currency in the U.S. was particularly bad for this. They all had nearly identical designs. When the designs are blurred, they are very difficult to distinguish from each other.
A person with low vision would need to read each bill with a magnifying glass or ask for help from other people. More recent designs for U.S. currency introduce visual changes that make each bill a little more distinctive, with added colors and other features.
Print and Screen Magnifiers
People with low vision often require print magnification or screen magnification to read printed materials. Something as simple as a magnifying glass can work for some people. Other people need the more powerful capabilities of an electronic print magnifier with a computer monitor. A screen magnifier works in a similar way, except that it magnifies the output of a regular computer on the screen.
Audio
for blind users
For most blind people, audio is usually the preferred method to access printed materials, especially if they are going to access the materials on their computer, because with a screen reader, users have many options as far as how to read it, including how fast to read it, whether to skip ahead to different sections, and so on. To convert printed materials to audio format, someone would need to record a person reading the materials, or a text-to-speech process or OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software program can convert the printed materials to digital text, and that digital text can then be read by a screen reader.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Printed Materials:
Principle 3, Simple and Intuitive Use
Printed text-based materials are supplemented with visuals that reinforce information
Printed materials that use language that can be understood by a wide range of users
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Printed Materials:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Options that are provided for printed materials, such as braille, large print, and electronic formats
Content on printed materials that is clear and distinguishable
Microwaves
Most microwaves these days have a flat touchscreen interface designed for visual users. There are no perceptible buttons or dials for a blind person to feel or grasp. The flat interface of microwaves makes them exceptionally difficult to use without sight or with low vision. Some people with visual disabilities will have friends or family members place bumped stickers on top of the buttons to make the interface more blind-friendly. Blind users would still need to memorize what each sticker meant, but at least they wouldn’t have to guess where the buttons were.
Tactile Interfaces
Older microwaves used to be built with dials, which were less of a problem for people who were blind. It turns out that you can still buy microwaves with dials, but they are much harder to find these days.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Microwaves:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Microwaves that have tactile interfaces, such as dials, or touchscreen interface and larger buttons
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Microwaves:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Microwaves that provide visual and audio feedback and have tactile markers
Televisions
With televisions, we enter into the multimedia area of accessibility. We have audio and video, as well as menu systems for changing settings. We also have to worry about the hardware itself.
Television Hardware
Can a blind person turn on the television and change channels, change the volume, and modify other important settings? What about a person with a motor disability, a cognitive disability, or an auditory disability?
Old televisions had physical dials on the outside. These could be difficult or impossible for a person with motor disabilities to use. On the other hand, a blind person could easily change the position of the dials and memorize which position corresponded to which channels.
Modern televisions tend to have much sleeker designs, with very few buttons on the television itself, and no dials. These newer designs don’t require a person to grip them, so they will be easier on people with weaker hand muscles, or on those who have no hands. The person still needs to push the buttons, though, which make it hard for more severe motor disabilities.
In most cases, a blind person can still turn the television on or off on the TV itself, and change the volume. Most TVs also allow channel changes on the TV set, but on some systems you need to set the channel on the TV to one option and make all the real channel changes on the remote control.
Remote controls
Remote controls solve some accessibility problems. A person with motor disabilities, for example, could use a mouth stick to push the buttons on the remote, rather than go up to the television, which may be too high to be within reach, or which may not have space underneath it for a wheelchair to roll up to it. If the buttons on the remote are very close together though, they can be a challenge to access by a person using a mouth stick, or by a person with tremors in the hands.
Some remote controls can be quite complex, with lots of buttons that look and feel similar. With a little bit of experimentation, or the help of a friend, a blind person could probably learn where the important controls are. Additionally, many modern remote controls have a tactile dot on the number 5 (and often on other important buttons, as well), allowing for some sense of orientation. A person with low vision probably would not be able to read the numbers and text directly, except perhaps with a magnifying glass. A person with cognitive disabilities may find the number and array of buttons overwhelming. In fact, many people with average or above-average intelligence also find the buttons on remote controls to be overwhelming!
Television menu system
One big challenge for blind people and people with low vision is the on-screen menu system.
Unless the menu system includes a built-in screen reader with audio output, a blind person will not be able to use it. Scheduling recording times, viewing show schedules, and accessing other features will be impossible. A user with low vision may need the text enlarged more than the television allows.
The good news is that deaf people won’t have trouble with any of the hardware on televisions.
Deaf Access to Television Shows
Once we get past the hardware, the television shows have to be accessible. Deaf viewers will be able to see everything on television, but they won’t be able to hear any of it.
Captions are the solution.
By default, captions are turned off on televisions. These are known as “closed captions,” which means that they can be turned on or off according to viewer preferences. Viewers need to go into the TV menu system to turn them on, or perhaps there is a button on the remote to activate the captions directly.
Captions need to capture all dialog and narration. They also need to capture important sounds not spoken by people, such as “dramatic instrumental music,” applause, screams, or other sounds that set the scene, provide context, or give meaning to the video.
Blind and Low Vision Access to Television Shows
People with visual disabilities have the opposite problem of deaf people. People with visual disabilities can hear television shows just fine (unless they are also deaf), but they cannot see them well, or at all. Dialog, narration, music, and background sounds are all accessible to people with visual disabilities, but if there are important visual elements without accompanying sounds, that information won’t be communicated to people with visual disabilities.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Televisions:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Televisions that have distinguishable tactile controls and larger buttons to operate hardware
Televisions that allow the use of personal or assistive devices, or voice control, to operate hardware
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Televisions:
Principle 3, Simple and Intuitive Use
Remote controls with fewer buttons that make using the television and program menus easier
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Televisions:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Televisions that have clearer, larger visuals and audio output for on-screen menu options
Televisions that allow users to enable captions and audio descriptions
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Movies:
Principle 1, Equitable Use
Movie theaters that provide integrated and adaptive seating
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Movies:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Movie theaters that provide assistive devices that allow viewers to amplify audio, listen to audio description, or view captions for movies
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Movies:
Principle 7, Size and Space for Approach and Use
Movie theaters that have wide aisles and seating for those who use assistive technologies
ATMs
As recently as 2012, an article in the Wall Street Journal, “ATMs Fall Short on Disability Rule,” pointed out that about 50% of all ATMs failed to meet basic accessibility guidelines for blind access, even with legal regulations in place. If we consider electric wheelchair access, the problem is even worse. In fact, nearly all ATMs are inaccessible to electric wheelchair users with limited upper body mobility. Even the most accessible modern ATM designs are a compromise between practical architectural concerns, the business concerns of banks, and full accessibility.
ATMs: Physical Accessibility
If you were an electric wheelchair user with limited upper body mobility, would you be able to roll up to an ATM and use its interface? Probably not. The vast majority of ATMs do not offer space underneath them to position a wheelchair, and you probably wouldn’t be able to lean over far enough (or at all) to reach the controls on the ATM.
Voice activation might work for some people with limited upper body mobility, but that would also reduce the privacy of the interaction. Anyone standing nearby would be able hear the person’s requests, including account and PIN information.
Unfortunately, the reality for most people with limited upper body mobility is that they need to depend on other people to perform these functions. Either the person will never use an ATM, or the person will entrust a friend or family member with the task of using the ATM on their behalf. There aren’t really any options that allow for independent access to ATMs for people with limited upper body mobility, except to redesign the physical interface. If the person were able to position the wheelchair under the keyboard, the person could use a mouth stick or a head wand to touch the controls, but very few ATMs are designed this way.
On the positive side, manual wheelchair users with full upper body mobility won’t have as much difficulty, as long as the interface is low enough.
ATMs: Blind Access
Many modern ATMs have headphone jacks, allowing a blind user to walk up to the ATM and hook up some headphones to listen to audio instructions, and to interact with the ATM using an audio interface. Headphones aren’t included with the ATM. Users need to bring their own. Even so, this is an important advance for blind people. Many ATMs also have braille characters on the keypads, making it possible for blind users to accurately type in their PIN and other information.
ATMs: Low Vision Access
Some ATM screens are difficult to read because of the low contrast between the text and the background. In fact, a person with perfect vision may also find the screen hard to read if the sun is shining directly onto the screen. High contrast screens benefit more than just people with low vision.
Online and Mobile Banking
Online banking can solve some of the access issues for users with disabilities. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to request cash this way and have it sent in the mail, but users could perform other functions, such as transferring amounts between accounts, finding out account balances, read account statements, and even deposit checks using applications that allow users to photograph the check and deposit it from home. Even a blind person could deposit a check this way, with a little practice.
All of this depends on the accessibility of the bank’s web site and mobile application. If either is inaccessible to people with disabilities, that just adds to the frustrations of not being able to use other aspects of financial institutions.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to ATMs:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
ATMs that have tactile interfaces, such as dials, or touchscreen interface and larger buttons
ATMs that are placed at varying heights for diverse users to access, and designed for wheelchair access
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to ATMs:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
ATMs that provide visual, tactile and audio information to users, and utilizes higher contrast settings to make visual information more distinguishable
ATMs that allow users to utilize their personal devices to interact with and operate ATMs
Mobile Devices: Hardware Accessibility
Mobile devices put the power of computing, and the power of the Internet, in our hands and at our fingertips. But wait. What if we don’t have hands or fingertips? Or what if we can’t use our hands or fingertips? That introduces some challenges.
Mobile Devices: Voice Recognition
One kind of technology that could potentially help people with motor disabilities is voice recognition, which can allow them to speak to their mobile device. Many mobile devices now come with some level of support for basic speech recognition. Speech recognition would work only if the person’s voice is clear enough to be understood reliably, though. A person with cerebral palsy would have a difficult time trying to be understood through voice recognition technology, considering that even most other people would also have a hard time understanding someone with cerebral palsy.
Mobile Devices: Keypads
Looking back a few years, one of the nice things about cell phones for people with visual disabilities was that the buttons were real buttons that you could push down, and there weren’t many of them. There were buttons for the numbers, to start or end a call, and to control the volume. That was pretty much all that was available.
As cell phone technology evolved, and as phones turned into sophisticated hand-held computer systems, people wanted better keypads, to allow them to type text messages, emails, and perform other typing tasks. The simple number keypad turned into a full-featured keyboard in a very small space. Cramming that many keys into that small of a space meant that the keys had to be very small and close together. That made it difficult for a lot of people to type accurately.
Touchscreen Phones and tablets
With the introduction of touchscreen phones, physical keypads disappeared altogether.
In fact, very few physical buttons at all were left on the phone. Nearly the entire set of functions moved to the touchscreen. It was hard to imagine a worse scenario for people who were blind. The early interfaces were completely inaccessible to blind users.
Current touchscreen phone and tablet interfaces offer quite a range of accessibility options. They’re still not perfect, but they have come a long way toward meeting the needs of users with visual disabilities. Users can choose to use audio output, combined with modified gestures and tapping actions that work for people who are blind.
iPhones offer a mobile iOS version of VoiceOver, which is the screen reader that comes with desktop and laptop Macs. VoiceOver for iOS isn’t quite as full-featured as its desktop sibling, but it’s quite good, especially considering its relative youth.
iPhones and other devices also feature options for low vision, such as zoom, large text, and color inversion.
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Mobile Devices:
Principle 2, Flexibility in Use
Mobile devices that provide a range of options for users to operate device such as a screen reader with modified gestures, zoom, tabbing, and changing high contrast settings
UD Principles and Examples that Apply to Mobile Devices:
Principle 4, Perceptible Information
Mobile devices that enable users to perceive information based on their needs, such as providing and modifying audio output and captions
