Introduction to Accessibility

Accessibility

Accessibility refers to the design of products, services, devices or environments for people with disabilities. Accessible design means the product must be accessible or usable with and without the need of assistive technologies.

What is Disability?

Disability is the consequence of an impairment that may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental, or some combination of these. A disability may be present from birth, or occur during a person's lifetime. In simple words, disability means inability to perform a task due to physical or mental impairment.

Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations.

Some types of disability includes visual impairment, hearing impairment, cognitive disability, mobility impairment.

What is Assistive Technology?

Assistive technology refers to a product which is used by people with disabilities to perform day to day activities. Assistive technologies assists a person in completing a task that would otherwise be impossible and helps people with disability to be independent.

For example,

1. Wheel chair is an assistive technology used by people with Mobility impairment. It allows people to commute from one place to another place.
2. A hearing aid is an assistive technology used by people with hearing loss. It is a device which amplifies the sound and helps people with hearing loss to hear more clearly.
3. Memory aids are any type of assistive technology used by people with cognitive disability. It helps a user learn and remember certain information.
4. Braille is an assistive technology used by people with visual impairment. Braille is a system of raised dots formed into units called braille cells. People can then use their fingers to read the code of raised dots.

Web Accessibility

Web accessibility means making the content present in the web available and accessible for people with disabilities. Each and every user must be able to understand, perceive and operate the content or information present in the websites.

Being our first blog, we would like to thank and dedicate this to our mentor and guru Mr. Rakesh Paladugula . You have been such an inspiration for us to start this and evangelize accessibility.

Source: Wikipedia