Beginner's Guide

About a quarter of the population in working age complains of various degrees of ametropia. Later
on, the percentage is much higher. Some of these problems can be compensated by glasses quite well,
others with limitations only. Certain eye diseases such as cataract or glaucoma can be resolved or at least
mitigated through surgery. Some, like retinitis pigmentosa or diabetic retinopathy, lead to a steady
deterioration of vision and ultimately often lead to complete loss of vision. "In the so-called" tunnel
vision, the visual field of the affected people is extremely limited - sometimes to the size of a two-Euro
coin, which is held at arm length from the eyes.
About 10% of the male population is affected by mild forms of colour blindness – which usually
means that some reds and greens cannot be distinguished from each other. Blind to other colours,
complete colour blindness or red-green colour blindness in women are very rare.
One other potential group of users has problems with the usual input technology - not everyone can
use a mouse or a standard keyboard.
There can be many reasons: arms and fingers are immobile or move spontaneously and are difficult
to control. Others have even no arms and no hands or are paralyzed from the neck down after a stroke
on one side. As long as a human being is capable to send a controlled binary signal - the famous 0 or 1 –
he can learn to operate a computer and its functions with appropriate software.
There are about 60,000 to 100,000 people in Germany with extremely limited ability to hear. Several
thousand of these were disabled in learning the German language so that they know it only imperfectly
(at the level 4th to 6th grade). This makes the demand for more understandable texts clear.
To communicate with each other, but also for the reception of foreign or sophisticated content they
prefer the German sign language - this is an idiom on its own, independent of the spoken language
based on a system of signs and gestures.
Attention
Not only people with low hearing abilities surf the Internet without or with speakers turned off! It is
not sufficient, for example, to give acoustic warning signals only - they must always be accompanied by a
clearly interpretable visual notice.
The more the Internet conquered all areas of life, the more situational disabilities are visible: slow
connections in the hotel, uncontrollable lighting conditions in the moving train, arranged waiver of
sound in the workplace.
All people benefit from accessible websites. It is not about meeting all the rules to the fullest extent,
which governmental institutions are required to comply to. Even small steps toward accessibility can
significantly improve the usability of a website.
Due to its high penetration, Joomla has the ability to influence a lot. With the standard template beez it
is now relatively easy, to create websites which are accessible and usable for many.
Joomla! 2.5 - Beginner’s Guide
Monday, 30 January 2012! Page 203