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An Insight into Designing for Disabilities
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Most designers think of the web only as a graphical or visual medium. This type of thinking and design alienates a large number of users who may be disabled. Designers of interfaces and other systems must understand that good design not only encompasses how information is displayed but also how the information may be interpreted by someone who has a vision, hearing, learning or physical disability; it is the role of the designer to make applications accessible. For this to happen it is important that designers understand the disabled audience, HCI design principles, the importance of information design techniques and the future of computing.
There are two fundamental groups of disabled users: those who have suddenly become disabled, and those who have gradually become disabled, such as the elderly. Both groups share a lot of the same challenges but go about completing tasks in different ways based on their mental models. Because mental models are developed through behavior and repetition, the mental models of someone who has gradually become disabled may be different than someone who has suddenly become disabled or always been disabled.
Those who have become disabled over time have most likely formed some mental models based on their experiences as an able bodied individual. A user who has been disabled from birth might have a completely different mental model because
they have never experienced something from an able-bodied person's view. When designing interactive systems for this audience the use of metaphors that match real world systems may not be as effective as they would for users who have become disabled over time. However, having no previous mental model allows the designer a chance to create a new interactive system that may be different and better than anything pre-existing. Many times it is difficult for people to learn new things or new skills because they have preconceived ideas regarding the difficulty or even the underlying purpose of such skill. For example, having no knowledge about how an old system worked, could make is easier on an individual learning about the new system because that individual is starting from a clean slate, without being bogged down from previous experiences. They have no pre-existing mental model to compete or compare.