What Are Assistive Technologies?
The basic definition of an assistive technology is as follows: an assistive, adaptive, rehabilitative device for people with disabilities or, in turn, elderly people who need assistance.
A wide variety of different assistive technologies exist. Some of the most notable assistive technologies, with regards to the technologies that those disabilities will use to interact with your website, are as follows:
-A keyboard overlay allows those who have limited motor skills to navigate a website with far greater ease than if they were forced to use their mouse.
-A speech recognition tool that converts spoken commands into actions or converts spoken words into search engine queries, both of which assist those with limited motor skills to navigate your website.
-A screen magnification tool that enlarges the text and images being displayed, making it much easier for those with limited eyesight to see the content on your website clearly.
-A braille terminal, which converts text into braille characters, thereby allowing those who are blind to read the content on your website.
-A screen reading tool, which reads out the text and other content on your website, allowing those who have limited hearing to understand the content on your website.
Your website must be compatible with all of those technologies. And while this may sound quite challenging, making your website compatible with these assistive technologies is likely far easier than you assume.
How Can You Design Your Website So That It Is Compatible With Assistive Technologies?
To design your website so that it is compatible with assistive technologies, there are several things that you absolutely must do. And these things are as follows:
-You must develop your website using solid, effective, and reliable code.
-You must use standard HTML tags.
-You must make sure all of the documents on your website are text-based.
Every single one of the above allows assistive technologies to interact with your website. But, if you don’t use standard HTML tags, or your code is faulty, then assistive technologies will not be able to interact with your website in the proper manner, thereby making it ADA inaccessible.
