Framework
Overview | Model | Assessing | Disability survey (5) | Demand (2) | Using guidance | Example
Demand & exclusion
The basics | Further details
The results from the Disability Follow-up Survey were presented in terms of the number of people with specific levels of disability. For vision, level V1 refers to extreme disability, V9 is mild disability, and V10 is full vision ability.
For the purpose of inclusive design, it is more useful to consider V1, V2 and V3 as being increasing levels of vision ability. For example, those in ability level V3 can tell by the light where the windows are (opposite of V1), and they can see the shapes of furniture in a room (opposite of V2), but they cannot recognize a friend if close to his face.
In order to estimate design exclusion, it is necessary to sum together the ability bands, to work out the total number of people who would be unable to perform a specific task.
For example, supposing a product required the user to see well enough to read a newspaper headline. The number of people excluded would be the sum of people in categories V1-V5, which is approximately 1% of the GB adult population.
However, if the required task is not specifically mentioned on the scale, then some judgment will be required to position the task between existing ability levels. The next page shows the same data presented in a suitable format to achieve this.
| Level | Ability |
|---|---|
| V1 | Cannot tell by the light where the windows are |
| V2 | Cannot see the shapes of furniture in a room |
| V3 | Cannot see well enough to recognise a friend if close to his face |
| V4 | Cannot see well enough to recognise a friend who is at arm's length away |
| V5 | Cannot see well enough to read a newspaper headline |
Definitions of some of the ability levels from the Disability Follow-up Survey and the corresponding number of people within each ability level
Overview | Model | Assessing | Disability survey (5) | Demand (2) | Using guidance | Example