Web accessibility for people experiencing illness or injury
This background reading is relevant to all University of Exeter web editors, and describes various situations that can be alleviated by web accessibility practices.
The specifics of how to implement these practices are not covered here. Web editors using University-supported web editing platforms will cover that material as part of their training.
For further details, please refer to supported and unsupported web editing platforms.
Overview
Examples of illness or injury impeding web access could include difficulty:
- typing, or using a mouse or touchscreen, due to a hand injury.
- seeing the screen, due to an eye infection.
- hearing audio, due to an ear infection or tinnitus.
- speaking, due to a throat infection or dental problem.
- cognitively processing information, due to viral infection, sleep deprivation, stress, anxiety or medication.
- viewing or engaging with certain visual content, due to its ability to trigger migraines or seizures in susceptible individuals.
People affected by these situations may experience them as unfamiliar and temporary, which means they will often be unaware of alternative ways of accessing web content, and in most cases will not have specialist assistive technologies to help them.
