Common Issues and Barriers to Access

Barriers to access may be obvious or not. Understanding the challenges to accessibility allows us to plan for a more inclusive university environment.

Examples of barriers for people with cognitive, learning, and neurological disabilities:

• Complex navigation mechanisms and page layouts that are difficult to understand and use.
• Complex sentences that are difficult to read and unusual words that are difficult to understand.
• Long passages of the text without images, graphs, or other illustrations to highlight the context.
• Moving, blinking, or flickering content, and background audio that cannot be turned off.
• Web browsers and media players do not provide mechanisms to suppress animations and audio.
• Visual page designs that cannot be adapted using web browser controls or custom style sheets.

Examples of barriers for people with physical disabilities:

• Websites, web browsers, and authoring tools that do not provide full keyboard support.
• Insufficient time limits to respond or to complete tasks, such as to fill out online forms.
• Controls, including links with images of text, that do not have equivalent text alternatives.
• Missing visual and non-visual orientation cues, page structure, and other navigational aids.
• Inconsistent, unpredictable, and overly complicated navigation mechanisms and page functions.