Situationally-Induced Impairments and Disabilities

An accessibility framework, introduced by Sears et al., that describes how everyday environments and tasks can temporarily impose the same kinds of barriers on non-disabled users that permanent impairments create for disabled users. Examples include reading a phone in bright sun (situational visual impairment), using a touchscreen while wearing gloves or in the cold (situational motor impairment), or talking to a voice assistant in a noisy cafe (situational hearing/speech impairment). Designing for SIIDs is a strong motivator for universal-design thinking because features built to help users in adverse contexts often benefit users with permanent disabilities too, and vice versa.