Research Studies About Accessible Technology

Question

I just found this, and with the dicussions lately, I think
many here would be interested. In 2003, Microsoft hired Forrester
Research to do a survey of the need for assistive technology. They
asked questions about visual abilities as well as physical
impairments.
Anyway, here are the results of a methodical survey (15,000+
respondents).
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/research/default.aspx
A few quick tidbits relevant to the discussions of text size
and scalability, directly from the survey:
--Approximately one in four (25%) computer users have a
visual difficulty or impairment.
--17% (21.9 million) of computer users have a mild visual
difficulty or impairment, and 9% (11.1 million) of computer users
have a severe visual difficulty or impairment
And an issue that hasn't been in the discussions here:
--19% (24.4 million) of computer users have a mild dexterity
difficulty or impairment, and 5% (6.8 million) of computer users
have a severe dexterity difficulty or impairment.
I suppose keeping links in the same place on every page so a
user wouldn’t have to move the cursor much would help.
Assigning accesskey and tabindex would be part of making a site
easier to use for the variety of impairments.

Answer 1

DLoe wrote:
> And an issu that hasn't been in the discussions here:
> --19% (24.4 million) of computer users have a mild
dexterity difficulty or
> impairment, and 5% (6.8 million) of computer users have
a severe dexterity
> difficulty or impairment.
> I suppose keeping links in the same place on every page
so a user
> wouldn?t have to move the cursor much would help.
Assigning accesskey
> and tabindex would be part of making a site easier to
use for the
> variety of impairments.
I think if the site is well structured there should be no
need for tabindex
and using accesskeys is not such a good idea:
http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/user_defined_accesskeys.asp
In any case, this shows how important it is to facilitate
tabbing
navigation. Good practice is to use:
- skip links when needed
- :active and :hover pseudo-classes
- redundant mechanism (onclick/onkeypress)
- tabIndex if/when need
- accesskeys with great care
- flyout/dropdown/sliding menus with great care
- the title attribute but not abuse it as it is not
accessible to keyboard
users as it is to "mouse" users
- etc.
Also *test* everything you implement, do not follow
guidelines for the sake
of "going by the rules". For example, test your named anchors
in IE (make
sure users are able to tab *from* them once they reached
them) and make sure
your "onkeypress calls" take into consideration that some
browsers consider
the "tab" key the same as the "enter" key.
Thierry
Articles and Tutorials:
http://www.TJKDesign.com/go/?0
The perfect FAQ page:
http://www.TJKDesign.com/go/?9
CSS-P Templates:
http://www.TJKDesign.com/go/?1
CSS Tab Menu:
http://www.TJKDesign.com/go/?3