13 million people in Germany live with some form of disability. Of these, 7.8 million are considered severely disabled. Our society is increasingly interested in creating a barrier-free social environment and making information accessible to everyone. However, there are barriers on the internet that block the way to valuable information.
For the target groups of digital accessibility, dead ends arise that often lead to complete exclusion from the relevant application or information. The reason for this is that the target groups for accessible websites are usually not taken into account when planning a website.
Everyone will be affected by barriers on the internet in the long or short term, whether due to old age or a broken arm. Below are seven limitations that make those affected dependent on accessible websites.
Age-related restrictions
20% of the total population in Germany are senior citizens, who individually form the largest target group. As they get older, their ability to concentrate wanes, their eyesight deteriorates and their fine motor skills deteriorate.
For example, due to poor fine motor skills, the cursor cannot be operated correctly with a mouse, which makes it difficult to navigate websites. Numbers or letters are often too small and can only be deciphered by users to a limited extent. In addition, helpful tools, such as the zoom tool in the browser, are not used due to a lack of knowledge.
Blindness & severe visual impairment
Technophiles, on the other hand, are blind people or people with severe visual impairments who rely on modern technologies. A person is only considered visually impaired if their visual acuity is below 30 percent. Below 10 percent is considered significantly visually impaired, below 5 percent as severely visually impaired and less than 2 percent as blind.
In order to obtain information from websites, the target group uses accessible screen readers. These translate information on the screen into speech. The screen reader displays information via a voice output in synthetic speech or via the Braille display in Braille.
A common barrier for this target group are, for example, registrations that require authentication in the form of a captcha. The request for a distorted code word, which distinguishes man from machine, is not recognized by the assistive screen reader.
Various providers also use acoustic captchas to increase accessibility. Unfortunately, this excludes deaf-mute people.
Visual impairments and color blindness
Around 500,000 visually impaired people live in Germany. A person has severe visual impairment if they have 5 percent or less vision despite wearing glasses. The most common visual impairments include glaucoma and cataracts. Cataracts are an eye disease in which the lenses of the eye become cloudy. As a result, vision deteriorates and details can no longer be seen clearly. Depending on the degree of the disease, those affected experience increasingly blurred vision, as if they were looking through a fog.
About 9% of all men are affected by red-green vision loss; red and green are interpreted as gray. Red-green deficiency is a color vision disorder in which those affected perceive red and green less well than people with normal vision. Online, for example, a red or green button would be an obstacle as this supposedly important button is not perceived as such. Important information such as error messages should therefore not only be marked by color.
Motor restrictions
Motor disabilities are defined as all limitations to physical mobility. There are many reasons for a motor impairment: be it tendonitis in the hand or a chronic illness such as rheumatism, Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis.
Due to their limited motor skills, those affected are dependent on simple keyboard use. In addition, dynamic elements such as a drop-down element are overwhelming for users and tend to be difficult to use.
Deafness & hearing loss
With a focus on hard of hearing and deaf people, it is clear that all audiovisual media present individual barriers. Multimedia content such as videos and audio content cannot be understood by users without subtitles or transcripts. There are two types of subtitles: Classic subtitles translate what is spoken in a movie. Subtitles for the deaf contain additional translations for acoustic information that the deaf person would otherwise miss.
All in all, users who have functioning hearing can also benefit. For example, in the case of a recording with strong background noise, an unclear speaker or for people who are just learning the language, it is advantageous to read along with what is being said. But people with learning difficulties also benefit greatly, as they can better understand information with subtitles.
Learning difficulties & illiteracy
Learning difficulties or impairments can affect comprehension, thinking functions, language, social skills and motor development. The target group includes people with Down's syndrome, for example. Impairments often occur in language development, motor skills and mental development, such as memory. The use of "easy language" and the barrier-free preparation of information in a target group-oriented, understandable form is important here.
This applies to illiterate people or people with severe reading difficulties - around 6.2 million adults in Germany between the ages of 18 and 64 cannot read and write properly. For many, writing is like a foreign language, making everyday tasks such as reading emails difficult for them. If easy language is used, the information tends to be easier to understand. No-gos are illegible fonts, such as cursive and decorative fonts:
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological diseases in Germany. The best known is the epileptic seizure. The affected person convulses, which can turn into convulsions and lead to shortness of breath.
Epileptics can be negatively affected by fast animations and movements or flashing elements on the web, which in the worst case can lead to an epileptic seizure.
User note: The following video can trigger a seizure in epileptics!
Conclusion
Many people benefit from accessible websites. If the target groups are taken into account in the planning of future and existing websites, the content can be consumed by more users so that a greater reach can be achieved. And most importantly, all people can participate in public and digital life. The ideal is a barrier-free internet, but there is a long way to go to get there. This makes it all the more important to make accessibility a priority and focus more on it. The legal framework for barrier-free online access has already been created. The WCAG and BITV requirements will soon be mandatory for more providers. You can find out more about the guidelines in our blog post.
