Temporary disabilities – everyone’s included

In the pursuit of true accessibility for our apps and websites we must include as many people as possible and not knowingly exclude anyone. There’s a lot to understand.

Knowing the types of disability or impairment our users might have is an important part of it.

Everyone’s included. Absolutely everyone.

Disabilities can be either physical or cognitive. They can also be permanent or temporary. And temporary disabilities aren’t limited to recoverable injury or illness.

They can also be transient and non-medical and could easily affect any user – including those with other pre-existing impairments.

These transient impairments are far from trivial, and might include:

Using smartphone with one hand while holding a bag on the bus.

One handed, unstable screen position, potentially unable to reach certain screen regions, distracted.

Using a device with a cracked screen.

Visual difficulty, invisible regions, blurring, misalignments, colour change or loss, unresponsive touch screen areas, avoiding sharp edges.

Using a monitor with poor contrast, colour or resolution.

Visual difficulty, light shade or weaker saturation not visible, colour misrepresentation, detail loss, blurring.

Using an unfamiliar device.

Additional cognitive load/friction, dexterity loss, greater chance of erroneous or accidental input.

Being unwell, perhaps with a cold, migraine or hangover that’s impairing concentration.

Reduced cognitive ability, loss of concentration, more difficult decision making, more likely to make errors, sensory impairment (i.e. blurred vision or photo-sensitivity).

Being under stress, in a rush, or flustered.

Loss of focus, impatience, more likely to miss important steps or information, more likely to choose defaults, more likely to make errors.

Poor connection.

Frustration, loss of concentration, diminished mood, takes longer to complete multi-screen tasks, may require process restart.

Noisy environment.

Inability to hear audio descriptions, narrative or audible notifications.

Quiet environment, trying not to disturb the baby sleeping next to you.

Inability to hear audio descriptions, narrative or audible notifications, low screen brightness or blue-light-filter changes/reduces visibility of colours and contrasts.

One handed while walking.

One handed, unstable screen position, potentially unable to reach certain screen regions, distracted.

While distracted by other things.

Loss of concentration or focus, more likely to choose defaults, more likely to make errors, more likely to abandon task.

Forgot glasses.

Visual impairment, blurred, difficulty reading smaller type, low contrasts or light colours may not be visible, more difficult to process information, may lead to eye strain headache, may limit time able to use device, more likely to make errors.

A strong case for accessibility

Understanding the impairments our users have (and could have) helps us better appreciate the work we need to do to include accessibility into everything we make.

Designing and building apps and websites for accessibility has long been seen as an optional extra at all levels of asset ownership and production. It should never have been the case, but now is the time for us all to do the right thing.

Recognising that absolutely everyone might have an impairment at some time, even if only transient, helps us make an even stronger case.