Assistive Technologies
Learn the types of assistive technologies and how we can effectively work with them to make access easier for our users.
Understanding assistive technologies is an essential part of understanding accessibility. Let’s take a closer look at what they are, how people use them, and how you should think about them in terms of accessible design and development.
Types of assistive technologies
Assistive technology is a blanket term that includes a wide variety of technologies, devices, and tools that help their users increase, maintain, or improve their functional capabilities.
Note: We’ll be using the term “assistive technology” in this course specifically to refer to the technologies that help users more effectively and comfortably access their computers and the web.
It’s important to remember that assistive technologies aren’t restricted to physical devices or tools. Some examples of physical tools include adaptive keyboards, switches, joysticks, eye or head-tracking systems, braille output devices, and styluses. However, assistive technology can also be software. Software examples of assistive technologies include voice-to-text or voice command systems, screen magnifiers, display adjustments, screen readers, and more.
Creating a comprehensive list of every available assistive technology would be nearly impossible. For our purposes, if an individual uses it to help them more easily and comfortably navigate websites or applications, we should consider it an assistive technology.
Let’s have a look at examples of some assistive technologies.
Assistive technology includes both software and hardware. The braille output device and large-text keyboard in the photo above are both examples of assistive hardware that have been attached to a user’s computer to make their experience easier and more intuitive. In the photo below, we can see an example of assistive software in the form of a screen magnification program designed to greatly increase the size and scale of the content on the screen. Whether the assistive technology in question is hardware or software, we still need to consider it as part of the user’s experience with the ...