Web Development

Imagine … you are right-handed and you just broke your right wrist. You're a programmer: how in the world will you get any work done?

Did you know that 15-20% of gamers are disabled (PopCap) and that are many others who also hit barriers. These include people with color dificiencies and those with situational impairments such as playing in a noisy room or in bright sunlight. All players have different levels of ability – there’s no ‘typical gamer’.

The accessibility gaming guidelines were developed in a collaborative effort between a group of studios, specialists and academics, to produce a straightforward developer friendly reference for ways to avoid unncessarily excluding players, and ensure that games are just as fun for as wide a range of people as possible.

In a study conducted by Google in 2008, it was found that there are more deaf and hard of hearing users with access needs in the US than all of the Internet users in Spain!  

How would the loss of your hearing affect you on the Internet?

There are three types of auditory impairments, any of which can be caused by accident, illness, environment, heredity, aging:

Pull up your favorite website, close your eyes, and imagine trying to use it.  Yes, that is extreme, but users users with disabilities face serious challenges trying to use inaccessible websites.  Vision disabilities affect website users in different ways depending on the type and severity of the disability.  The good news is that we can make it significantly easier for users by following some accessibility guidelines.

You've probably known people, maybe a neighbor or a co-worker, with a reading disabililty or attention-deficit disorder. So you know how users may struggle to write down information (e.g., fill out a form) or comprehend the information on web pages.