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CPACC #5 - Disabilities Categories - Visual

There are several types of disabilities that affect speech, sight, hearing, movement, thinking or even feeling, and now it's time to study them! In this issue he will talk about one of the ones we are always most aware of (or should be), visual impairments.



Visual impairments can vary according to the degree of vision loss, loss of acuity, sensitivity to light or incorrigible permanent loss of vision.



Blindness: is the partial or total loss of vision. Some people are able to perceive lights, shapes in general of large objects, but cannot read text or recognize people. It affects globally 2.2 billion people, mostly people over 50 years of age or diseases such as cataracts.



Color blindness: Disability that affects the ability to distinguish colors, especially red and green. The red and green combination is the most common, especially in men (1 in 12 men vs. 1 in 200 women affected; I don't like to talk about gender but statistics are what they are). It is very curious that other types of color blindness such as blue and yellow affect men and women equally (1 in 10K worldwide).



Low vision: It is the loss of vision that cannot be fixed, or in other words, "not having enough sight to do what you want to do". It cannot be rectified with glasses, contact lenses or surgery. This is when tools such as magnification, high contrast colors and simple graphics become important. It affects 3.5% of the population worldwide, with 90% of these people being low-income.



And what can we, as designers, do? Orient our design to screen readers, give text alternatives to multimedia, layout, clear and consiste nt hierarchies and navigations, possibility of zooms and augmentative help, color and shape contrast and keyboard navigation support.