A student in Cork, who has a severe vision impairment, says that Digital Accessibility makes "all the difference in the world".
Patrick Hennessey was reacting to a report by Inclusion and Accessibility Labs, a spin-off of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, which found that 72% of leading Irish companies do not have accessible websites.
These websites have addition day-ta embedded within them, which allows people with disabilities to receive all the information without being able to see it.
The Digital Accessibility Index found that not one sector of the Irish economy achieved greater than a 50% accessibility rate.
Speaking to RedFM News, Patrick says that accessible websites keep him independent:
"It makes all the difference in the world. There's generally no happy medium, I suppose. If a website is accessible, then I can use it. If it isn't, I can't. If that website is accessible instead of having to try and navigate to a local... to navigate the shop itself - as someone who's blind, you know, that will be an exceedingly difficult task if I'm not familiar with the store. I can just order my shopping online, if the website is accessible if the app is accessible, to my home so those sorts of things make the world of difference in my day to day life".
