Accessibility Challenge: Could you navigate the web without a mouse?

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Title: Exploring digital content differently

Time: 15-20 minutes

Purpose:
To help you experience just a small part of the challenges some users face when interacting with digital content. This activity is a hands-on way to reflect on how everyday tasks might feel for someone with a disability.

Activity:

  1. Have a go at completing one of these simple task and reflect on how difficult or easy it was:

    • Try and navigate a website or complete a form without using your mouse
    • Try turning the brightness down on your device and see how easy/challenging it is to read content
    • Exploring a website with your non dominant hand in control of the mouse

  2. Reflect on the experience: What was frustrating or surprising? Was it easier or harder than you expected?

  3. Write up a short summary of which task you selected and what your experience was of attempting to carry out below.

Other resources: n/a

Lesson definitions:

Types of disabilities:

  • They can fall into various categories including:
    • Physical
    • Auditory
    • Visual
    • Cognitive
  • They can be minor or short term, or major or long term.
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I tried to navigate a giant form using my keyboard only.
The form had different sections that were as default were closed, when navigating to these the focus wasn’t indicated at all. So i had no idea where I was.
This was definitely more difficult than you expect. I don’t think i’ll ever be able to complete this form with just my keyboard, but that might be because i don’t really know how to use the keyboard to navigate. For example: is there a way to go back to a previous selected item?

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So I tried to explore my own portfolio website with my right hand (opposite hand), and I tried to explore every tab on my website using the Tab button.

The positive part :
I was able to navigate to every tab with the help of the Tab button on my keyboard.

The frustrating part:
Every time to move to a new tab or a new link, I have to keep pressing the Tab button from the first link / CTA onward.

Along with that, I also tried to see the content at a lower brightness, and the content was visible up to a certain brightness, and after that, once the brightness was under a certain limit, the text was completely invisible.

The whole actions were done with the help of the keyboard only, without touching the mouse.