Diverse Abilities and Barriers
Diverse abilities
There are many reasons why people may be experiencing varying degrees of auditory, cognitive, physical, speech, and visual disabilities. For instance, some may have disabilities from birth, an illness, disease, or accident, or they may develop impairments with age. Some may not consider themselves to have disabilities even if they do experience such functional limitations.
Each individual is unique. People have diverse abilities, skills, tools, preferences, and expectations that can impact how they use the digital technology. For instance, consider the following aspects:
- Age-related impairments: People with age-related impairments often share the same functional requirements as other people with disabilities. However, their use of digital technology and assistive technologies may differ.
- Multiple disabilities: Some people have combinations of different kinds of disabilities, which may limit their approaches for interacting with digital technology. For example, someone who is deaf and has low vision might benefit from captions for audio, but only if these captions have adjustable size and color.
- Health conditions: Some people have health conditions that may affect their stamina, dexterity, or concentration. For instance, some may experience fatigue, pain, or other symptoms that could have an impact on their physical use of the computer or limit the duration or extent of their use of digital technology.
- Changing abilities: Some people may be experiencing progressive or recurring functional limitations that impact their use of digital technology differently at different times. For example, some may need particular accessibility features on one day, and others or none on another day, depending on their condition.
- Temporary impairments: Some people may be experiencing temporary impairments such as those that may occur due to an accident, surgery, or medication. They may not know about accessibility solutions, may not know how to use accessibility features, and may be unaware of their needs.
- Situational limitations: Some people may be experiencing constraints due to their surrounding or due to other situational aspects. For example, they may be in a loud environment and unable to hear audio, in bright sunlight and unable to see a screen, or they may not be able to afford some technologies.
Digital technology designed for people with a broad range of abilities benefits everyone, including people without disabilities. It is, therefore, important to consider the broad diversity of functional needs rather than to categorize people according to medical classifications.
Diversity by group
Learn about common types of disability and accessibility barriers.
- Auditory
Auditory disabilities range from mild or moderate hearing loss in one or both ears (“hard of hearing”) to substantial and uncorrectable hearing loss in both ears (“deafness”). Some people with auditory disabilities can hear sounds but sometimes not sufficiently to understand all speech, especially when there is background noise. This can include people using hearing aids. - Cognitive, learning, and neurological
Cognitive and learning disabilities affect how people store, retrieve, or use information. Often, only some functions are impaired while others are unaffected. Many of these disabilities do not affect overall intelligence. Cognitive and learning disabilities are usually invisible and can be age-related. Many users may not have a formal diagnosis or disclose having a disability due to social stigma, vocational concerns and prejudices. - Physical
Physical disabilities (sometimes called “motor disabilities”) include weakness and limitations of muscular control (such as involuntary movements including tremors, lack of coordination, or paralysis), limitations of sensation, joint disorders (such as arthritis), pain that impedes movement, and missing limbs. - Speech
Speech disabilities include difficulty producing speech that is recognizable by others or by speech recognition software. For example, the loudness or clarity of someone’s voice might be difficult to understand. - Visual
Visual disabilities range from mild or moderate vision loss in one or both eyes (“low vision”) to substantial and uncorrectable vision loss in both eyes (“blindness”). Some people have reduced or lack of sensitivity to certain colors (often called “color blindness”), or increased sensitivity to bright colors. These variations in perception of colors and brightness can be independent of the visual acuity.