Features for people with learning disabilities No 1. The wait

On Dobson's Choice you have to wait until you have listened to the instructions before you can click a button.

The first time you mouse over a button, or click the button you will hear 'Dobson' telling you what the button does. This is to make sure that you understand what will happen before you actually click the button. You will hear a slightly longer version of the instructions.

The second time you mouse over the button - you will hear just the name of the button ( It's a reminder to you of what the button does)

The second time that you click a button - you will be taken through to whatever the button takes you to.

You can disable this 'Wait' function by clicking on the button in the bottom right hand corner - the one that says faster. This is designed for people with slightly higher computer skills.

Why have we done this?

On Dobson's Choice we have designed it to be good for people with learning disabilities who typically..

• have no reading skills,
• and are a bit clumsy with the mouse

The dilemma of designing web things for people with learning disabilities is that people need to know what something will do before they click it.

It's easy if you can read - you just read the label on the button or link and you will get some idea about what will happen if you click it.

But if you can't read - then what can you do?

Pictures help - you can put a picture on a button to try to get across the idea about what the button might do, but people don't usually get enough clear information from a picture to be sure about what is going to happen.

On Dobson's Choice we have used sound to help some people to understand what will happen. If people have difficulty with hearing or the sound is switched off - then there is the text of the sound in a speech bubble.

The next problem is how to operate the instructions which tell people what any particular button is going to do.

As a web designer you have a few things you can do with a button or link - you can do something on Mouse-Over, on Click on double Click etc.

We think that Double Click will be too difficult for many people with learning disabilities. So we have only used Mouse Over and Click.