Are chat rooms accessible to people with disabilities?
Printable Version This article is also available in Spanish. Chat rooms present one of the more difficult web challenges for people with disabilities. Since communication in a chat room tends to be fast-paced, people who type slowly may have difficulty keeping up, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities may have difficulty tracking the multiple simultaneous threads of conversation. For screen reader users, the accessibility of chat rooms depends in part on how they were developed. Screen readers are able to handle some HTML chat rooms, but most current chat rooms are developed using Java, with little or no attention devoted to the application’s accessibility. Even accessible chat rooms, however, can be poor in the area of usability for a screen reader user and can present a confusing, difficult-to-navigate interface, particularly as new content is continually added to the page. WebAim’s article Accessibility of Online Chat Programs includes more specific information on chat
