Designing an Interface for Disabled user

1. Designing an Interface for Disabled user By Abdi jama Laveeza Ola

2. Introduction • Interface designers face a new challenge today, a challenge that when solved, will not only enable them to stretch the boundaries of the technical world but also open up the World Wide Web to cognitively disabled users. This population is both underserved and frequently misunderstood. With the advances of medical science, users who might never have left the hospital before are living independent, productive lives. As part of this goal, the Internet must be as accessible to them as other common elements of society.

3. cognitively disabled • A person who is cognitively disabled may have:   • Below average general intellectual functioning. The person often has difficulty with problem solving, reasoning skills, and understanding and using language.  • Significant delays in functioning. The person has difficulty with reading, math and writing skills. • Deficiencies in adaptive behaviour or ability to interact with others, and in meeting the demands and expectations of the environment.  

4. Mental Retardation • Mental Retardation. A person with an IQ below 70 (average IQ is 100) having difficulty functioning independently is considered to be mentally retarded.

5. Language and Learning Disabilities • Language and Learning Disabilities refers to a wide range of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, and calculating/integrating perceptual/cognitive information. They are presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction.

6. Injury and Stroke/ Alzheimer's Disease • Head Injury and Stroke. Head injuries and stroke usually result in physical impairments, cognitive impairments or both • Alzheimer's Disease is a degenerative disease that leads to progressive intellectual decline, confusion and disorientation.

7. General Recommendations  • After defining the target population, we as web designers need to evaluate the needs of the cognitively disabled people not viewing them as handicapped or plain retarded, but as special people with special needs. What we need to understand here is that some of the basic functions of  memory, thought process, speech which ordinary people use as swift reflexes, pose great problems for cognitively disabled people and we can help them by making this effort a little easier.

8. Ways of helping • Website designers should provide a plain language description of the website, the purpose of the site, and what can be done or learned here • The introduction need not be extensive but it should be plain and straightforward so that a user will know what the website is about

9. Language and definitions • Provide definitions for unusual terms used . There are times when designers will need to define terms that may not be known to the average person. Define the term when it first appears. Add an extra sentence explicitly explaining what it means.

10. Navigation There should be a simple way to backtrack or start over while navigating the website to reduce anxiety over failure in using it. Similarly to provide confirmation to users, any activation of a control or change of state should have an accompanying auditory indication.

11. Use of graphics • The mainstay of information on the Internet is graphics which differentiates it from other methods of instruction, making it more accessible, and user-friendly. This is one aspect that can be suitably exploited to aid people with cognitive disadvantages.

12. 1. For input, allow entry of a shortcode for a longer sequence. Simplify required sequences, limiting the number of steps.   • 2.Use of multiple selection techniques for different users with different needs. Use direct selection techniques • 3.Provide an easy (as well as prominent and clear) exit that returns the user to the original starting point from any point in the sequence.  • 4. Standardize within the website by using same shape/colour/icon/label for same function and action • 5. Commands and features should remain consistent from screen to screen.  • 6. Shorten menus.  • 7. Use pictographic or ideographic symbol system that helps such users to construct complex sentences, answer and ask questions. 

13. Think! •  Think Like:               People who are disabled should be treated • The same as everybody else