Purpose of This Document

The purpose of these guidelines is to lay out what application developers must do in order to carry out their part in the overall process of making standard computers and software as accessible as possible to people with disabilities or those with reduced abilities due to aging.

Organization of This Document

This document is divided into two sections plus appendices.

Part I - Guidelines

To facilitate ongoing use, the design guidelines are provided up front. In order to understand the rationale behind the recommendations however, it is strongly recommended that Part II be read in its entirety at least once.

Part II - Background and Reference Information

Part II of this document is a Background and Reference Section which provides:

• a brief discussions of the seven basic reasons for making application software more accessible;
• one page overviews of each of the major types of disability and the problems they encounter;
• a brief description of the Application Developers role in making software accessible as well as the role of other (system software, 3rd party developers, system integrators); and
• brief one- to two-page overviews of the disability access software products and strategies available for the major types of disability.

Since much of the role of application software developers is in making sure their software works well with other access strategies and features of the operating system, this background information can be of great value in understanding the rationale behind and properly implementing the recommendations and ideas in Part I.