Disabilities and differences

Summary: Accessibility encompasses all disabilities and differences, including: but not limited to vision, hearing, motor, speech, and cognitive. Disabilities can affect anyone at any time, be visible or invisible, and be permanent, temporary, or situational.

Illustration of symbols representing the different types of disabilities, with grape and salmonberry colors

Overview

Accessibility encompasses all disabilities and differences, including: but not limited to vision, hearing, motor, speech, cognitive, and more. Disabilities can affect anyone at any time, be visible or invisible, and be permanent, temporary, or situational. 

Image description: Illustrations depicting permanent (including one arm, blindness), temporary (including ear infection, laryngitis), and situational disabilities (including heavy accent, distracted driver).

Illustration of permanent, temporary and situational disabilities, showing illustrated people in different situations

Image sourced from the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit

Get involved with The Disability Alliance at Google

The Disability Alliance (DA) is an Employee Resource Group for Google/Alphabet employees who care about disability, learning differences, or neurodiversity. They share advice, advocate, and build awareness, and are passionate about creating innovative and inclusive teams, products, education, and workplaces.


Want to learn more about disabilities?

school

Get the FAKC

Learn more about disabilities and differences by completing the Foundational Accessibility Knowledge Certificate (FAKC)

description

Disability Statistics

Review recent statistics about disabilities across the world at go/disability_stats

description

There’s No Such Thing as Average

Read an article by Todd Rose on Brain Science and the Limitations of Standards

Up next

Continue on to learn about five primary categories of disabilities and differences. This will help you understand who benefits from accessibility and why it's so important.