In a workshop today I suffered from temporary digital impairment. why? because of the reflection on the TV screen. it might seem trivial, but not being able to clearly see the screen made it hard for me to be fully engaged with the content being displayed. I had to work so much harder to try and see and understand the content.
I tried to concentrate; I really did, but I found myself zoning out at times because the cognitive effort it took to process the information being displayed was too great.
it made me think about accessibility and how hard some websites make it for some of their users to access their content. I read an article recently where someone had sued a US website for not being accessible. They won. The judge told them that they must upgrade their website so that it meets WCAG AA standard.
But it’s not just people that use screen reading software we need to think about. It’s everyone. As I heard some time ago from GDS – everyone has an impairment at some point.