IV. Whom For?
4.1. Disabled and Disability
4.1.4. Physical and Neural Disability
Physical and neural disabilities influence one’s capability to move one’s limb; which have a direct effect on the web browsing experience.
For example, Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disease that affects the central nervous systems and that causes motor troubles. This disease generally affects elderly people and is characterized by shakings, especially in the hands and the thumb; which can severely damage one’s ability to use a mouse, and especially to click on a very small area.
As a general good practice, it is preferable to reduce the use of very small clicking areas, especially in Flash applications.
People who have paralysis or limited moving ability can also encounter problems to browse a website. These people generally use adaptive devices that allow them to use a computer. AssistiveWare offers on its website a series of videos presenting some of the adaptive devices put in place for people with strong physical disabilities. These videos point out that the devices used by these users have a behaviour quite close to the Keyboard’s. In terms of web accessibility, these users can be best accommodated by allowing a flowing navigation with the keyboard only, which means, as previously said, that the navigation order within the page should not be made illogical by the use of the tabindex property and that functions targeting the mouse usage should offer an alternative.