Museo&Web
Planning Kit for a Quality Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums
Disabled people and the Web
From the Handbook for quality in cultural Web sites Improving quality for citizens, paragraph 2.2.2:
Certain types of disability can be catered for with compensatory or so called “enabling” technology. This can be hardware or software which:
- effect “equivalent” conversion of the information
from one sense organ to another. Some examples are:
- from the computer monitor (sight) to touch (Braille bar for visually-impaired users),
- from the computer monitor (sight) to sound (vocal synthesis for visually-impaired users),
- from sound (audio documents) to sight (text documents) (vocal recognition for motor-disabled and deaf users);
- permit different ways of using certain tools, for example:
- special mouse (for motor-disabled);
- special keyboard (for motor-disabled);
- compensate for disability of a sensory faculty, for example:
- enlarging the text on the computer monitor (for the visually impaired)
Specific tools are available to compensate for other types of disability: in these cases access can be effected through the use of specific technical and editorial tools during the realisation of the Web site.
Some examples are:
- for users with difficulty in distinguishing colours, for example, it is important to avoid giving information solely through use of colour and also to guarantee sufficient contrast between the text and the background.
- for users affected by photosensitive epilepsy, it is necessary to avoid moving images at those frequencies that could provoke an epileptic fit;
- for users with learning difficulties or language difficulties it would be necessary to develop clear navigational mechanisms and to use clear and simple language in the documents.