Steps Taken to Accommodate Disabilities

While designing the interface to be used throughout the system, I considered the needs of three specific disability groups, as I consider these three to be affected most by the design, layout and colouring used on a Web page.

• Blind
• Visually impaired
• Colour blind

Blind

By following strict HTML standards and guidelines, and by keeping the ordering of text within each page as logical as possible, “text to voice” software used by the blind to interface with the system will not encounter problems related to a complicated design and layout of the site.

Visually Impaired

Visually impaired people may find Web pages hard to read if they use medium to small font sizes, where there is no option to make the font size larger. Usage of multiple style sheets and the option to switch between them easily will make the pages within the system considerably easier to view.

Colour Blind

Usage of high contrast colours, such as black text on a white background, mean that a colour blind person should have no difficulty in differentiating between the text and the background and this will also aid partially sighted people when viewing the system’s pages. This disability is particularly important to consider, as a member of the focus group which is to test the system is colour blind.