(Floe) UI Options considerations research

Types of disabilities

Visual impairments 

Total blindness

• Offer transcriptions of images, animations and video.  

Low vision

• Keep the layout free from unnecessary clutter. 
• Use a sans-serif font. 
• Avoid italics.

Color blindness

• Offer alternatives to information that is relies on the use of color.

Hearing impairments

• Provide real-time text captioning for all audio, video, and multi-media presentations.
• Offer transcripts of audio content.

Motor impairments

• Allow as much time as needed to complete assignments that require human-computer interaction. 

Cognitive impairments (literally quoted text)

• Avoid making cluttered or disorganized web pages.
• Avoid using unnecessary graphics or pop-up windows.
• Make web pages easy to navigate.
• Lay out web pages so that they present a logical flow of content material.
• Always use page titles and headings.
• Make all text portions in sizes large enough to be easily seen and distinguished.
• Avoid the use of flashing on-screen objects.
• Whenever possible, allow individuals with cognitive impairment disabilities as much time as needed to complete assignments that require human-computer interaction.

Visual disabilities

Particular needs:

• Enlarging or reducing text size and images
• Customizing settings for fonts, colors, and spacing
• Listening to text-to-speech synthesis of the content
• Listening to audio descriptions of video in multimedia
• Reading text using refreshable braille (small dots that are raised and lowered to display characters that are read by scanning over the raised dots using the fingertips)

Hearing disabilities
Particular needs:

• Transcripts and captions of audio content
• Media players that display captions and provide options to adjust the text size and colors of captions
• Options to stop, pause, or adjust the volume of audio content (independently of the system volume)
• High-quality foreground audio that is clearly distinguishable from any background noise

Physical (motor) disabilities
Particular needs:

• Large clickable area:  may have trouble clicking small areas
• Enough time to complete task:  may need more time to type, click, or carry out other interaction
• Full keyboard support for all functionality provided on a web page
• Type single keystrokes in sequence rather than typing simultaneous keystrokes to activate commands
• Visible indicators of the current focus

Cognitive disabilities
Particular needs:

• Clearly structured content that facilitates overview and orientation
• Consistent labeling of forms, buttons, and other content parts
• Predictable link targets, functionality, and overall behavior
• Different ways of navigating websites, such as through a hierarchical menu or search option
• Options to suppress blinking, flickering, flashing, or otherwise distracting content
• Simpler text that is supplemented by images, graphs, and other illustrations
• Grammar and spelling tools to assist writing

Speech disabilities
Particular needs:

• Alternative modes for interaction to use services that rely on voice

Interesting reference: Videos of How People with Disabilities Use the Web

Guidelines for accessibility in e-learning environments 

Images

• Images must be scalable to adapt to the visual requirements of earch student.
• Some students can not distinguish colors, so they have problems to understand some pictures. Include or make available an image description. 

Columns

• Putting all the contents in one narrow column can be helpful for a screen magnifier user, so they don't need to scroll left and right continuously. Allow the users to control the page layout. 

Audio

• Audio transcriptions are a powerful tool for most of the visually impaired users.
• Highlighting the text that is being read is useful in all cases (extend the feature that now is available in the Video Player).

Color

• The color can be used to identifiy elements that are recursively used. Allow the users to customize the color of the title or other identifiers of the content. 
• Color is useful to identify the information that has been updated (in documents that contain data). 

Visual impairments

Context

• Some students use a screen reader, others a screen magnifier or the zoom function on their computer (in a decreasing sense of vision loss).
• Visually impaired students take into account that they will need more time to complete an activity than students without visual impairments.
• The use of assistive tools for the visually impaired slows interactions with the website and reading.
• They have to take breaks from the computer screen to rest their eyes.

Formats

• It is essential for educational content to be provided in all possible formats (audio, PDF, Word, etc.), so that each student can choose the format that best suits his or her needs.
• Only a few students who use a magnifier or the zoom function on their PC also use the print format. 
• Audio is used by many students, regardless of their preferred assistive tools. Some consider it the ideal format.
• When students have to consult content for the learning activities that is not part of the official content, the accessibility of websites or other documents may not be guaranteed. 

Recommendations

• Allow users to decide what content to view and where to view it (widgets can be useful for this purpose). 
• Enable customizable shortcuts.
• Allow color customization (including changing color of links).
• Use liquid layout (to allows the page to be reorganized when the zoom function is used).

• "A blind person may develop a different mental model of both the interaction and the learning processes, so it is crucial to provide an easy overview of contents."
• "Aural feedback is very useful for blind users since it associates a specific sound with a given situation." 
• "Although not all content can be provided in audio format, at least the main core should be considered." 
• "It would be useful to be able to select parts of the content so that they can be extracted and read in different ways (...) In practice, this function allows creation of content by assembling a choice of parts." 
• "Another important and useful function would be annotating as well as commenting on content using either voice or written text. Other useful functions could be underlining or highlighting functions (...) when he/she [the user] wants to read the underlined or highlighted contents, a function showing or extracting only those parts would be very useful." 

 Cognitive impairments

• "People with cognitive, language and learning disabilities comprise the largest group of those with disabilities accessing the web."
• "(...) People with cognitive disabilities often have a problem in only one area of cognition, and can be of average or higher-than-average intelligence."
• There are many different types of cognitive disabilities that incorporate varying degrees of problems associated with:
  • Memory
  • Perception
  • Problem-solving
  • Conceptualizing

Recommendations (includes only the recommendations that refer to customizable interface issues)

• Clearness
  • Reduce movements in the page (for people that have difficulties focusing on important information). 
  • Highlight important elements, such as: navigation, necessary or urgent content, links and headings. 
• Simplicity
  • Avoid tangential information
  • Clean design with minimal distractions
  • Do not use drop-down or hover menus
  • Avoid background audio or images
  • Ensure the site can be printed legibly
  • Hide content until the user requests it

• Readability
  • Shorten sentences
  • Reduce column width 
  • Use headings
  • Reduce colour contrast
  • Highlight key information at the beginning of the page or in text boxes
  • Identify the target of each link
  • Do not use italics
  • Do not use ALLCAPS
  • Increase the line height on paragraphs
  • Use a font of 12px or higher
  • Do not make columns of text larger than 70 characters
  • Use a sufficient, but low, contrast between text and background (eg. a pastel background and black text)
  • Use a Sans Serif font, such as Arial or Verdana
  • Limit different fonts within the site
  • Ensure links are always underlined
  • Provide large clickable areas for links
  • Provide features so the user can easily change text and background colour, text font and size
• Feedback
  • Include a hover effect on links so that the link highlights when the user hovers over it
  • Include a hover effect on table cells so that a particular cell is highlighted when a user hovers over it
  • Include audio feedback for any activation 
  • Provide multi-sensory error feedback, for instance a dialog box and an audio error message
  • Supplement text navigation with graphic icons
  •  
• Recommendations for Forms 
  • Ensure field labels are positioned physically close to the relevant field
  • Ensure dual controls (eg. Submit and Reset) are not close together
  • Do not use time limits
• Recommendations for Audio and video
  • Provide transcripts to audio and video
  • Provide  captions to video
  • Provide  audio descriptions to video
  • Allow users to stop, pause or slow down audio and video