Other Disabilities...

Hearing Disabilities

People with hearing disabilities currently have few problems when using the Web since sound effects are usually totally gratuitous. However, with the trend toward multimedia increasing, this is not going to remain the case. Examples of solutions to this problem would be making transcripts of spoken audio-clips available and making videos available with subtitles, (which will also benefit users who are not native speakers of the language used in the video).

Physical Disabilities

Users who have difficulty with detailed mouse movements may also have problems holding down multiple keyboard keys simultaneously.

I can recommend and design ways to help with these issues, such as improved browser design and even disability support on newer operating systems.

Cognitive Disabilities

It is fairly safe to assume that most users will have significantly greater difficulty navigating a Web site than its designers have. Simplified navigation helps all users, but is a required enabler for users at the opposite extreme of the scales.

I can give you help you to structure a logical navigation. For example, people who have difficulty visualising the structure of information can be helped if the site designers have produced such visualisation for them in the form of a sitemap. They would be further aided if the browser updated the display of the sitemap with the path of the navigation and the location of the current page (bread-crumb).

Language Disabilities

Most search user interfaces require the user to type in keywords as search terms. Users with spelling disabilities (and foreign-language users) will often fail to find what they need as long as perfect spellings are required. Fuzzy search facilities on web sites is one way to avoid this problem. For example, if "color" is entered into a search, then the search engine may return all documents which contain "color" or "colour" - to accommodate alternative spellings.

When searching for "color coding", Google displays pages containing variants on the words entered (coding, codes) - widening the search: