The video below shows people with profound intellectual disabilities using the web. Before that there is a link to a PDF summarising key barriers to web access for this group, techniques you can use to overcome these barriers, examples of good sites for this audience, and some useful links. The same PDF is used for people with severe and profound learning disabilities.

Profound Intellectual Disabilities Checklist (PDF 84kB)

The video below shows people with severe intellectual disabilities using the web. Before that, there is a link to a PDF summarising key barriers to web access for this group, techniques you can use to overcome these barriers, examples of good sites for this audience, and some useful links. The same PDF is used for people with severe and profound learning disabilities.

Severe Intellectual Disabilities Checklist (PDF 84kB)

The video below shows people with mild intellectual disabilities using the web. Before that, there is a link to a PDF summarising key barriers to web access for this group, techniques you can use to overcome these barriers, examples of good sites for this audience, and some useful links.

Mild Intellectual Disabilities Checklist (PDF 84kB)

• Intellectual disability
• Learning disability
• Learning difficulty
• Cognitive disability
• Mental retardation
• Developmental disabilities.

Who uses which term? Term use can be summed up as follows:

• Most UK social/health services use the term ‘learning disabilities’ and are likely to continue doing so.
• UK Government guidance in most areas also uses ‘learning disabilities’ interchangeably with ‘learning difficulties’.
• In practically every other country ‘learning disabilities’ is used to describe scholastic disabilities, such as those often characterised as dyslexia.
• The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommend the term intellectual disabilities.
• The WHO (along with the United Nations (UN)) also use the term mental retardation, but this has negative connotations in the UK.
• It’s important to be aware that most non-UK references to learning disabilities are not referring to intellectual disabilities.

what is intellectual disability?considering affected people

The UK Government Paper Valuing People (2001) quotes 1999 figures for incidence of learning/intellectual disabilities as:

• Mild intellectual disabilities: 25 per 1000 people or 1.2 million people in total.
• Severe and profound intellectual disabilities: 210,000 people.

The Mencap Website (2008) quotes 2007 figures as:

• 1.5 million people in the UK have an intellectual disability.
• 200 babies are born with a learning disability every week.

The number of people with intellectual disabilities is rising by about 1% a year because of:

• better life-expectancy, for example for people with Down’s Syndrome.
• better life-expectancy and post-natal care.
• the increasing number of children surviving birth complications.

screen readertext-to-speech

Simpler applications, working transparently to convert text-to-speech and providing more selective announcement of semantic elements, are likely to be the most effective solutions for ID users. Provision of text-to-speech server-side may also be a preferred solution for developers, particularly if a predictable, testable and consistent approach is required for their audience. Numerous text-helper and server-side tools exist, some of which are free to end users, the most common we have encountered are summarised on the ‘text-to-speech applications’ page.

touchscreentouchscreen

While essentially just emulating a standard mouse and requiring no major technical adaptations per se, touchscreens have a few implications which developers and designers should account for:

• Screen Resolution
  Touchscreen users often use low screen resolutions such as 640x or 800x to increase the size and accessibility of clickable areas and prevent erroneous ‘clicks’. Pages which do not render fully in smaller viewports and require use of scrollbars will present barriers. Lower viewport widths should be supported without horizontal scrolling and in-page navigation using anchors employed to mitigate requirements to interact with vertical scrollbars or a keyboard.
• Button/Icon/Hotspot sizes
  Since the hand and finger can often obscure the display during interaction, use of very small buttons, icons and links in close proximity should be avoided
• Mouse Button/Click Behaviour
  In many circumstances actions should be mapped to mouse button press rather than release events – eg in Flash using the onPress rather than the default onRelease event handler will most often be required for time critical operations such as within games.

The majority of switch users without ID, use switches via assistive software, to provide sophisticated means of keyboard or mouse emulation. For these users, predictive text and dynamic scanning grids allow an efficient means of entering text or controlling applications using standard keyboard controls and shortcuts. From the developer’s perspective such switch users can be effectively included online, providing attention is given to WCAG2.0 guidelines, particularly in respect of keyboard operability.

ball switchsingle switch

Switch users with ID are less likely to be using accessibility ‘middleware’ and custom controls accepting keypresses directly will often be required, if users with severe and profound are to be supported by an application. Most switches used by this group are connected to the computer via a simple interface which allows the keypresses sent by switches to be selected, but a good default choices would be ‘1’ and ‘2’. Sometimes users may map two switches to ‘tab’ and ‘enter’ as a means of navigating web pages generically.

Single switch users rely on the application they are using, or accessibility middleware, to move focus automatically – in a web page context akin to pressing the ‘tab’ key automatically after a set delay, leaving the user to press ‘enter’ when the desired item has focus. A more able user may be able to undertake more complex and efficient operations via single switch, for instance narrowing a number of group selections to a single item, rather than stepping through a large number of items individually.

Even if switch users are not targeted or provided with custom controls, consideration should be given with respect to difficulties certain common practices present to switch users.

A single switch user accessing a page with a 2 second scan delay for instance could take 1 minute to arrive at the 30th link on a page. Use of prominent in page navigation therefore can be an essential aid to switch users, rather than simply a usability convenience. The increasing trend to employ off page positioning for in-page navigation, without focused items to view, effectively prevents their use by many users. Likewise using text links without graphical annotation for in page navigation is likely to exclude many ID users accessing a page via switches.

SAW5 is a free Windows application from which simple and complex switch scanning grids to be created, sample grids for common browsers are included.
www.ace-centre.org.uk/saw5

HotSpots 2.0 provides a free and simple means of retrofitting switch accessibility to web applications without the need for custom controls to be scripted. This application is used to define a sequence of absolute (screen) positions for progression by switch. Ensuring a fixed screen resolution is defined and the requesting browsers are run fullscreen, allows a measure of consistency to be assumed between different users.
www.ace-centre.org.uk/hotspots2

For further reference and testing, a large suite of free switch-accessible software and applications, mostly intended for non-ID users be downloaded from:
www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/accessapps/

• The BBC website
• The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) website
• The official JK Rowling website
• The Glenbow Museum
• Prisoner 4099

The BBC Website

One of the world’s largest websites, the BBC site has accessibility as a core design principal. Although some recent developments such as iPlayer are controversial, the BBC in general takes enormous care to ensure the site works well across a range of platforms and with most AT.

The RNIB Website

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the RNIB’s extensive Xpedio backed website is a model of accessibility and usability providing excellent support for screenreaders and most AT across all common browsers and platforms.

The Official JK Rowling Site

The JK Rowling site is much celebrated for it’s accessibility enabled Flash content which parallels the main site accurately. Further fallback content is available in the form of a text-only rendering which is always kept both faithful and current.

The Glenbow Museum

The Glenbow Museum site was developed using Macromedia Studio and maintained largely via Contribute. The site achieves WCAG AA conformance throughout and is frequently held up by Adobe as an example of how their tools can facilitate accessible content management, design and development.

Prisoner 4099

Prisoner 4099 is the winner of 2007 Jodi Awards for Web Accessibility. A number of young people with visual impairments worked with National Archives to produce the site, accessible archive material and a radio play based on the experiences of a Victorian young offender.

Mencap

Mencap is the UK’s largest ID charity and a prominent lobbyist and service provider for people with ID. Their general audience site provides some accessibility features targeting ID visitors, including server-side text-to-speech audio via ReadSpeaker.

Learning Disability Coalition

Learning Disability Coalitionis the homepage of a coalition of UK campaigning group for people with ID. The site is for general audience but includes additional accessibility enhancements for ID users. Notable inclusions are server-side text-to-speech, via ReadSpeaker, and an animated, talking help avatar, via SitePal. An easy read text as an Adobe Acrobat download is also provided and this includes simplified text supported by accessible concept images from Photo Symbols. Adobe’s inclusion of easy to use text-to-speech functionality in Acrobat Reader has added greatly to the accessibility of such documents for non-readers.

Peepo

Peepo is a long established picture directory for people with ID. Text and sound are sometimes used to support the primary content which is pictorial (SVG images).

Newham Easy Read

This site is a transition portal linking to numerous mini-sites created by people with ID. Sites are built using a serious of simple forms which allow easy upload of audio, video, images and text. Some users record and upload their own audio versions of the text, though the server converts text to mp3 audio where no user audio is provided.

Common Knowledge Glasgow

Common Knowledge is a social networking site developed for and around a group of ID users in Glasgow. The site relies mostly on images to support its text based content and services but also provides games and other interactive content throughout the site.

Symbol World

Symbol World is a popular symbol based news, magazine and reference site created by Widgit Software. Text-to-speech is optionally provided via BrowseAloud and Widgit’s own Web helper application Webwide. The Widgit-Rebus symbols used to support text on this site are the most commonly employed symbol system in the UK, although other similar notably those of Makaton, BLISS and PCS are also in widespread use.

Ookjij

A Dutch site for people with a learning disability. It uses sounds and pictures so it is easy and fun to use – even if you don’t speak the language.

Enabledlondon

Enabled London is a website about going out in London. The site has been developed by a group of people with disabilities, it has practical information opening times and wheelchair access to lots of London venues.

Easy Health

A health information website that aims to make health information easy to understand. It uses lots of video clips, some that have been made especially for the site and many from Channel 4’s Embarassing Illnesses TV series.

Here are some websites The Rix Centre have made:

• Trans-active
  Trans-active is a Mencap project which brings teenagers with and without intellectual disabilities together to make multimedia which communicates the interests, aspirations and support needs of the intellectually disabled participants.
• The Tate Project
  The Rix Centre was commissioned by HFT to make the TATE website to describe an inclusive project about employment to people with intellectual disabilities. Those with intellectual disabilities involved in the project have their own section called AT and Me where they can upload photographs and text.
• The Road Ahead
  The Road Ahead website was commissioned by SCIE to display online a report about young people with intellectual disabilites views on transition information. The research was carried out by a group of young people with intellectual disabilities from an advocacy group called North Somerset People First.
• p-cubed
  p-cubed was an experimental project produced by undergraduate students working with the Rix Centre. Its aim was to tell the stories of a group of adults with intellectual disabilities in a multimedia form which was engaging and innovative.
• Newham Easy Read
  This website is full of links to useful information about transition. This information has been created to help young people with learning disabilities to make choices when leaving school or college.