Understanding Accessibility

Everyone

While we generally think of barriers in terms of access for people with disabilities, there are some barriers that impact all types of users, though these are often thought of in terms of usability. Usability and accessibility go hand-in-hand. Adding accessibility features improves usability for others. Many people, including those who do not consider themselves to have a specific disability (such as those over the age of 50) may find themselves experiencing typical age-related loss of sight, hearing, or cognitive ability. Those with varying levels of color blindness may also fall into this group. Some of these usability issues include: link text that does not describe the destination or function of the link overly complex content inconsistent navigation low contrast unstructured content.