Other: Personas and potential accessibility issues

Dec 3, 2015 by Teresa C.

Personas and potential accessibility issues

1) B fell down a hill while running to close his car windows in the rain, and fractured multiple fingers. He’s trying to surf the web with his left hand and the keyboard.

Potential accessibility issue:

• Having fractured fingers limits his physical ability to access a computer. If he is right hand dominant (and sustained fractures on right hand), he would have less dexterity on his non-dominant hand (left) to precisely use the computer mouse. His typing would be slowed if he typed with only one hand compared to if he was a touch typist using both hands prior to his injury. If he is trying to complete computer tasks involving a lot of typing or precise mouse clicks initially it may take him a very long time compared to his pre-injury state making his computer less physically accessible.

2) D is color blind. Most websites think of him, but most people making PowerPoint presentations or charts and graphs at work do not.

Potential accessibility issue:

• This individual may not be able to see essential visual content displayed in charts or graphs because they are unable to detect the colours visually. This may limit his access to information impacting performance at school and work.

3) F has been a programmer since junior high. She just had surgery for gamer’s thumb in her non-dominant hand, and will have it in her dominant hand in a few weeks. She’s not sure yet how it will affect her typing or using a touchpad on her laptop.

Potential accessibility issue:

• This individual may experience swelling and pain with increased use of her hands. This would impact her ability to type efficiently and impact precision using a touchpad on her laptop limiting her ability to use the computer for school, internet research, and for typing assignments. If she does not have access to a speech to text program she is greatly limited in her ability to complete school tasks and navigate her computer.

4) G was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age. Because of his early and ongoing treatment, most people don’t know how much work it takes for him to read. He prefers books to the Internet, because books tend to have better text and spacing for reading.

Potential accessibility issue:

• If this individual had to conduct a literature search and read scientific articles, not all PDFs will have clear text and spacing making it difficult to read even if a hardcopy was printed. Some PDFs don't allow individuals to copy paste text into a word document so the option to change font style, size, and spacing is limited. Thus inaccessible PDFs are a potential accessibility issue for this individual. For reading on websites, if text was zoomed in to increase text spacing, the layout of website may become jumbled making reading more difficult for an individual with a reading disability.

5) N has poor hearing in both ears, and hearing aids. Functionally, she’s deaf. When she’s home by herself she sometimes turns the sound all the way up on her computer speakers so she can hear videos and audio recordings on the web, but most of the time she just skips them.

Potential accessibility issue:

• When videos and other media have audio and no other means of communicating messages, individuals who are hard of hearing or deaf may not receive this information at all. For example, if this individual was doing internet research and wanted to watch a video on "how to train your dog", did not have working speakers, and no subtitles were provided with the video, this video is not accessible and essential information would be missed by the individual.