What is Web Accessibility?
Designing your website to be accessible is ensuring people with impairments and disabilities have equal access to its content. This allows anyone the chance to easily navigate, read, and interact with websites. Accessibility can and should be taken into consideration for all kinds of sites, from those of service providers, online merchants, social media, information and education, and all other variations which people with disabilities and impairments should have available to them.
There is a wide range of impairments and disabilities people may have, from cognitive, physical, auditory, and visual in nature. This website provides a foundation for understanding some of the more common types of visual impairments, along with an overview of a few guidelines for designing website for the visually impaired.
Types of Visual Impairments
Prevent Blindness America tells us there are 53.2 million Americans 45 years of age or older who have some form of visual impairment. These impairments range from mild to severe, with some of the most common forms listed below.
Color Blindness
Despite its name, most people who have color blindness don’t see the world as shades of gray. It’s also known as color vision deficiency (CVD) of which there are also multiple in variations. The most common type of color blindness is red-green color blindness, which can be broken info Protan and Deutan types.
Complete color blindness, also called achromatopsia, is relatively uncommon and often associated with light sensitivity.
Low Vision
Vision impairments that can’t be fixed with standard treatments like glasses or contacts, surgery, and medicine are low vision conditions. This still allows people to see to an extent, but affects daily life, making it difficult for people to read, drive, easily recognize objects or other people, and clearly see computer, television, and phone screens. The most common types of low vision are:
- Central vision loss
- Peripheral vision loss
- Night blindness, or low light blindness
- Blurry vision
Blindness
Legal blindness is not defined as a total loss of vision, but as having a visual acuity of 20/200 or less in their best eye with corrective lenses, meaning the person would be able to see something 20 feet ahead of them that a person with 20/20 vision would be able to see 200 feet ahead of them. Legal blindness can range from a near-total vision loss of 20/200 vision to a total loss of vision, both of which require the use of alternate methods of performing tasks that are usually performed with sight.
