The phrase "affected the ability of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing how something has influenced or changed someone's capacity to do something.
Example: "The recent changes in policy have significantly affected the ability of employees to work remotely."
Alternatives: "impacted the capacity of" or "influenced the capability of".
Delays in the notification of illness may have affected the ability of the investigation to identify the reason for the norovirus contamination Source: The Health Protection Agency.
Over 90% of 200 charity and council homeless agencies surveyed said that benefit sanctions had affected the ability of young people to access accommodation.
The collapse of home values across the country appears to have already profoundly affected the ability of people in many states, including New York, to sell their homes and move, curtailing domestic migration.
The no-identifying-photos policy affected the ability of the media to reach the public with their stories about the detainees, relegating the press to telling picture-less, abstract, dehumanised stories.
A spokesperson for the group said: "We are experiencing an issue with our internet banking service this morning, which has affected the ability of some customers to log on successfully.
Researchers led by Henrik Mouritsen of the University of Oldenburg in Germany found that cutting the trigeminal nerve, which links the beak to the brain, affected the ability of Eurasian reed warblers to navigate properly.
None of these modifications affected the ability of GcvB to control OppA expression.
Finally, modulating the expression of yhaM via deletion or overexpression drastically affected the ability of the cells to produce cysteine.
The authors examined selected academic and nonacademic factors, including the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory III, that affected the ability of prelicensure baccalaureate nursing students in acquiring pharmacology knowledge.
In some instances (Wandel and Bugge 1997), high income did not influence the consumption of organic food because their inaccessibility affected the ability of some high-income people to purchase such food (Lockie et al. 2006).
On both surfaces, and in both MFC and MEC reactors, increasing the amount of latex applied onto the biofilm adversely affected the ability of the anode to recover exoelectrogenic activity to pre-application current levels (Lyngberg et al. (2001)).
