Introduction to "How People with Disabilities Use the Web" In-Suite Navigation Introduction How do people who cannot move their arms use your website? What about people who cannot see well or at all? Or people who have difficulty hearing or understanding, or have other accessibility needs? This resource introduces how people with disabilities, including people with age-related impairments, use the Web. It describes tools and approaches that people with different kinds of disabilities use to browse the Web and the design barriers they encounter on the Web. It helps developers, designers, and others to understand the principles for creating accessible websites, web applications, browsers, and other web tools. This resource includes the following pages: Stories of Web Users - stories of selected scenarios of people with disabilities using the Web, to highlight the effect of barriers and the broader benefits of accessible websites and web tools.
Tips: [Top of Page | Next Page - Stories of Web Users] Accessibility. The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect. Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, culture, location, or physical or mental ability. When the Web meets this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability. Thus the impact of disability is radically changed on the Web because the Web removes barriers to communication and interaction that many people face in the physical world.
However, when websites, web technologies, or web tools are badly designed, they can create barriers that exclude people from using the Web. The mission of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is to lead the Web to its full potential to be accessible, enabling people with disabilities to participate equally on the Web. See below for: Alternative Text for Images. Web Design Practices | Breadcrumb Navigation. Color Theory Tutorial by Worqx. Why study color theory? If you are involved in the creation or design of visual documents, an understanding of color will help when incorporating it into your own designs. Choices regarding color often seem rather mystical, as many seem to base decisions on nothing other than "it looks right. " Although often told I had an eye for color, the reason why some colors worked together while others did not always intrigued me and I found the study of color theory fascinating.
While attending the University of Minnesota I enrolled in almost every course I could from different departments: graphic design, interior design, and fine arts. During my studies, I learned that there were 2 main reasons why scholars investigated color—the first involved the communication of colors; the other involved the application of color.
Communicating Color What is red? HTML Red Pantone® Red Pantone® Warm Red TRUEMATCH® 6-a Color Application The next several pages of this site offer a tutorial regarding color theory. Useit.com: Jakob Nielsen on Usability and Web Design. Gestalt principles of form perception by Mads Soegaard. Gestalt psychology attempts to understand psychological phenomena by viewing them as organised and structured wholes rather than the sum of their constituent parts. Thus, Gestalt psychology dissociates itself from the more 'elementistic'/reductionistic/decompositional approaches to psychology like structuralism (with its tendency to analyse mental processes into elementary sensations) and it accentuates concepts like emergent properties, holism, and context.
In the 30s and 40s Gestalt psychology was applied to visual perception, most notably by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Khler, and Kurt Koffka who founded the so-called gestalt approaches to form perception. Their aim was to investigate the global and holistic processes involved in perceiving structure in the environment (e.g. Sternberg 1996). Law of proximity Figure 1.A: A real-world example of the law of proximity from MTV Music Awards 2002 Law of similarity Law of Prgnanz (figure-ground) Law of symmetry Figure 4.A.: CSC Finland's logo. 1. The Gestalt Principles. The Gestalt Principles Gestalt is a psychology term which means "unified whole". It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied. These principles are: Similarity Similarity occurs when objects look similar to one another.
The example above (containing 11 distinct objects) appears as as single unit because all of the shapes have similarity. Unity occurs because the triangular shapes at the bottom of the eagle symbol look similar to the shapes that form the sunburst. When similarity occurs, an object can be emphasised if it is dissimilar to the others. The figure on the far right becomes a focal point because it is dissimilar to the other shapes. Continuation Continuation occurs when the eye is compelled to move through one object and continue to another object. Closure Examples Proximity Figure and Ground Figure. 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design. Visibility of system status The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. (Read full article on visibility of system status.) Match between system and the real world The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms.
Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. (Read full article on the match between the system and the real world.) User control and freedom Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Consistency and standards Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing.
Error prevention Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. See Also.