A Danish study has shown that up to 25% of all web users may be disabled in some way, either by functional disabilities like blindness or technical disabilities like slow internet connections, older computer equipment or viewing the web on mobile devices.

This gives us a lot to think about when considering how usable our sites are, especially in light of this recent lawsuit against Target.

Acessibility on the internet affects many different user groups. An accessible website pays attention to users that for instance:

• Uses earlier versions of a browser or uses another browser than the website is tested with.
• Has a slow internet connection or has a smal screen
• Uses new technical platforms for instance mobile and wireless devices
• Has age related functional disabilities and has difficulties seeing, hearing, or has difficulties using a mouse
• Is color blind
• Is blind and therefore needs assistive technology for reading aloud (such as a screenreader).
• Is visually impaired and therefore has a need to enlarge text without loosing track of things
• Is motor impaired and therefore has difficulties using mouse and keyboard
• Is hearing impaired or deaf and therefore has dificulties understanding digitized sound and speech if there is no text version available
• Has cognitive functional disabilities and have problems with complexity and information overload.

Up to 25% of all webusers are affected by accessibility problems.

Here’s the Danish version of the entire article.

More on usability issues from Disabilitystatistics.org and Jeff Veen.

[Sources: Justaddwater.dk]