People with special needs and their problems with applications and digital interfaces… problems and solutions

Smartphones and computers have revolutionized mobile technology and the way we communicate today. Designers have tried to gradually transform the technology market into a seamless platform for all users, including people with special needs. We have recently seen a range of customized applications. For example, we have the Prologue2Go text-to-speech app for people who have trouble speaking.

The user may need to do several things that require more than one device, people with special needs may need to carry a money recognition device and another to identify colors and screen reader and magnifier, but now they can download the screen reader application and application magnifier and the application of the recognition of money and colors on their phones and carry one device Instead of several devices.

There are also people with color blindness where color blindness or lack of color vision CVD affects one in 12 men and one in 200 women around the world, meaning that for every 100 users visiting your website or application there can be 8 people with blindness Colors.

In this article, we will give you guidance on the basic things you need to know so that your digital products are suitable for all users, especially those with special needs.

Accessibility will not affect creativity and innovation

Accessibility will not force you to make a grotesque or boring product but will provide you with a set of limitations and fundamentals when thinking about your design. These design constraints will give you new ideas to explore and lead to better products for all users. You can then design for a variety of users who will interact with Your products may include people with special needs - blind, visually impaired, deaf, hearing-impaired, people with mobility needs that may be temporary or permanent, or people with cognitive needs.

Do not use color as the only visual means of transmitting information

This helps users who have difficulty distinguishing colors, including people with special needs who suffer from color blindness, so use color to highlight just what is clearly visible.

Ensure adequate contrast between text and background

According to WCAG for contrast it is recommended that the contrast ratio between text and text background be 1 to 4.5, and if your bold font is between 24 pixels or 19 pixels the minimum is reduced from 3 to 1, this principle helps users with visual impairment Or color blindness to see and read text on the screen clearly.

Provide visual focus signal to focus on the keyboard

(focusoutline0): This single line of CSS makes it impossible for a visitor to use a website using a keyboard only. This instruction is in effect by default unless you change it, but fortunately, with periodic updates to CSS, This kind of problem has been avoided.

Since basic focus patterns can be removed by designers and developers to be replaced by visual ones that match their webpage styles, it is difficult for someone to like the dashed gray borders on IE, FireFox, or the blue halo in Google Chrome. The problem is that most websites don't create These focus patterns, which are essential to the success of keyboard users, are largely absent on the web.

We can give a quick example of this with a simple exercise to try a website that doesn't always provide visual focus, open a tab and visit the website of the mobile phone manufacturer, press the Tab key repeatedly to navigate through the page. You may see it in some links on the page but not all links, which affects someone who uses the keyboard only to interact with the Internet, but if you remove the default focus, replace it with a better option.

Be careful when working with forms and shapes

In recent years we have seen the data-filling fields remain the same. Modern designs have lacked clear boundaries and visible markers. Clear boundaries of form fields are important for users with special needs and it is important to know the location and size of the click location for people using a standard pointing device. The cognitive difficulty is difficult to find and interact with fields without common visual cues.