TECHNOLOGY FOR SPECIAL NEEDS

Human beings use technology to perform all types of tasks. An important issue related to this unquestionable fact is that technologies must be designed so that they can be used by all types of people without any discrimination of age, educational level, abilities, health conditions, and so forth. The term accessibility has been proposed to refer to the parameter that measures the degree to which technology use is not limited by any physical or cognitive barrier. Accessibility is an essential component of the usability parameter that refers to the ease with which a user can learn to operate, prepare inputs for, and interpret outputs of a system or component (International Organization for Standardization [ISO],1998). Accessibility is an issue related to users that have some kind of physical or psychological characteristics that impose any number of barriers to technology use. For example, there are people such as paraplegics with some physical limitations for interacting with a personal computer. It is evident that the input systems of the interface designed for a paraplegic cannot be those that are found commonly in the devices of general use. Other obvious examples of users with special needs are those that have some sensorial deficits, like blindness or deafness. People with mental disabilities also face many challenges in today’s complex technological environment and in the pace in which life and technological advancements take place. These people can have difficulties, for example, reading signs when they are on the street, at the post office, or in a hospital. In order to help mentally disabled individuals avoid the problems in situations that can seem trivial to many people (such as finding the washbasin in a public place), technological aids are needed. A special user group for which accessibility is an essential parameter is the elderly. The increasing number of elderly people in our societies and the changes in the social structures in caring for them that have occurred in recent decades causes us to recognize the necessity for designing a variety of technologies for attending to them in their daily activities (Czaja & Lee, 2003). Diversity in Research Perspectives, Needs and Contexts In this issue of Human Technology, we have collected six papers that cover some important aspects in the design of accessible technology. Vanderheiden (2003) defines accessible