ROKTalk has been designed to help anyone who finds that using the Internet is a difficult experience. Because the Web is primarily a visual and text-based medium, it poses problems for a large number of users. ROKTalk includes assistive features that have been created specifically to help the users below, although we have found that the benefits are by no means limited to these groups.
Dyslexic users
Somewhere between 4-5% of the population are profoundly dyslexic (over 2 million people in the UK). A further 10% of the population show some signs of the condition.
(Source: British Dyslexia Assocation)
Users with low literacy levels
The Moser Report (2000) found that 7m adults in the UK (20% of adults, or 11.7% of the total population) were functionally illiterate - that is, if they were given the Yellow Pages they could not find the page for plumbers.
(Source: Literacy Trust - Moser Report 2000)
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology suggested in 2004 that 16% of the UK population between 16-65 (over 5m people) were not sufficiently literate to pass an English GCSE at any grade.
(Source: Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology)
Users with learning difficulties
1.5 million people in the UK have learning difficulties, according to Mencap. People with a learning disability find it harder than others to learn, understand and communicate.
(Source: Mencap)
Visually-impaired users
2 million people in the UK have significant sight loss, of whom 365,000 are blind.
(Source: Royal National Institute of Blind People)
The World Health Organisation estimated that globally, in 2002, more than 161 million people were visually impaired, of whom 124 million people had low vision and 37 million were blind.
(Source: World Health Organisation)
People for whom English is a foreign language
Precise figures for the number of people in the UK who do not speak English or speak it as a foreign language are difficult to come across. A clear demonstration of the UK’s increasingly multicultural society can be seen in our schools, however.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families 2008 Survey found that 12.5% of schoolchildren - or 815,450 - did not speak English as their mother tongue as of January 2008. For primary schools, the proportion was 14.3%, or one in seven, compared with 10.5% in 2004, the year before European Union expansion.
(Source: Department for Children, Schools and Families 2008 Survey - See Page 2 of the report)
Ageing web users
There are 9.6m people in the UK over the age of 65. The prevalence of disability increases significantly with age, as many studies have shown. Some ageing web users may also find computers harder to use in general, and would therefore benefit from assistive technology.
(Source: CIA World Factbook)