Visual Disabilities
Introduction
Article Contents
Something to Think About…
Assistive technology supports tasks that would be difficult or impossible for those with disabilities if that technology was not available. Most people that wear glasses or corrective lenses would not consider themselves as having a disability, yet many of them would have difficulty accomplishing everyday tasks if they did not have that technology. Glasses and contact lenses have become so commonplace in society and are so effective at correcting many visual disabilities that most people do not consider them assistive technology in place due to a disability.
Imagine if a web page was designed to be incompatible with glasses or corrective lenses? If this were to occur, then the impacts of that visual disability and the considerations for ensuring the content worked with those technologies would suddenly become very acute. Much of web accessibility is simply ensuring that web content is compatible with various assistive technologies.
Some people have visual disabilities that are not easily corrected. Some have no vision at all. Total lack of vision represents the extreme end of the scale of [...]