5 Types of Disabilities and How They Affect Web Experience

To build truly accessible products, you must understand how people with different disabilities experience the web. It's not just about following a checklist – it's about understanding the user's reality.

Disabilities are commonly divided into five categories: visual, hearing, motor, cognitive, and speech. Each category has a broad spectrum of conditions with different needs.

This guide explains each category, how they affect web experience, and what you can do to accommodate their needs.

Visual disabilities

Visual impairments range from total blindness to low vision and color blindness. Each condition has unique needs:

Blindness:

Users rely entirely on screen readers and keyboard navigation. They 'see' your site through sound and braille.

Low vision:

Users can see something but need magnification, high contrast, or screen reader as supplement.

Color blindness:

About 8% of men and 0.5% of women have some form of color blindness, most commonly red-green.

Test your site with a color blindness simulator. If you can't understand all information without color, you have a problem.

Hearing disabilities

Hearing impairments include everything from total deafness to hard of hearing and processing difficulties.

Deafness:

Users cannot hear sound at all. They rely on visual information.

Hard of hearing:

Users can hear some but have difficulty with unclear speech, background noise, or high frequencies.

Deafblindness:

Users have both visual and hearing impairments and often use braille displays.

Motor disabilities

Motor disabilities affect the ability to use hands, arms, or other body parts to interact with devices.

Limited fine motor skills:

Difficulty making small, precise movements like clicking small buttons.

Tremor/shaking:

Unintentional movements that make precision difficult.

Paralysis:

Users may lack mobility in one or more body parts.

Cognitive disabilities

Cognitive disabilities affect thinking, memory, attention, problem-solving, and learning. This is a broad and often overlooked category.

Dyslexia:

Difficulty reading text, especially long words and blocks of text.

ADHD:

Difficulty with attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.

Memory difficulties:

Difficulty remembering information from previous steps.

Autism spectrum:

May affect processing of sensory information and social interaction.

Cognitive disabilities are the most overlooked. WCAG 2.2 added several criteria specifically for this group.

Speech disabilities

Speech disabilities affect the ability to speak clearly or at all, which is relevant for voice-controlled interfaces and phone communication.

Speech difficulties:

Stuttering, unclear speech, or voice problems.

Muteness:

Inability to speak.

Impact on web:

With increasing use of voice assistants (Siri, Alexa) and voice control on the web, this becomes increasingly important. Always ensure there's a non-voice-based alternative.