Re: Breaking it Down: Types of Cognitive Disabilities

At 03:33 PM 4/4/2000 , Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Let's look at a slightly different approach - what are the different kinds of
>functional requirements? This doesn't really group cognitive disabilities by
>themselves, since the different requirements cover some other groups as
>well. But it probably helps us answer the question "what do we need to do to
>solve the problem?".

I disagree, I think we need to start with users first to make sure
that we are dealing with -real- problems and not just -possible-
problems.  When we talk about access for people with CD, we need
to look at them, not look primarily at groups they intersect
with.

>Here are some guesses
>+ Not being able to read text (but not having a problem with arbitrarily
>   complex content)

But we've been told repeatedly (why, I don't know) that screenreaders,
which compensate for inability to read text, are not a solution for
CD user.

>+ Not being able to concentrate on one thing among many potential
>   distractions

See, to me, you're getting way to broad here.  This is like trying
to approach visual impairment by saying:

+ Not being able to visually recognize all objects that may be
   on a screen.

In my opinion, it's much more helpful to look at the different
types of visually impaired users -- those who are completely
blind, those who can see with the help of magnification software,
those who can't see colors -- and then proceed from there.  It
feels too much like trying to lump CD people together and then
extracting "commonalities" will abstract the humans out of this
equation.

>+ Not being able to comprehend abstract concepts without concrete examples

Wait, that sounds like this mailing list when dealing with CD
issues. :)

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Director of Accessibility, edapta                  http://www.edapta.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
AWARE Center Director                         http://www.awarecenter.org/
Next of Kynn: a quasi-regular web log           http://www.kynn.com/next/

Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2000 18:38:56 UTC