Day 53: Users with Cognitive Disabilities

Published on 22 Jan 2019

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Users with cognitive disabilities can include a wide scope of people, including autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer's, and ADHD. Persons in this category may have trouble concentrating, experience a neurophysiological disability, or struggles with a level of intellectual disability. People with cognitive disabilities may use some of the same strategies that people with reading difficulties use in order to navigate the web. Additionally, some people in this group may use assistive technology that assists with writing on the web.

• Read Cognitive and Learning Disability Solutions (ATLA)
• Skimmed Assistive Technologies for Cognitive Disabilities [PDF]
• Revisited Diverse Abilities and Barriers (W3C)

Things to consider as a web developer/designer when trying to include this category of disability:

• Clean and simple layout / presentation is of utmost importance.
• Images and multimedia should supplement text, when possible.
• Provide clear and consistent labels.
• Utilize convention with predictable interactions.
• Offer options to suppress distractions, like carousels, animation, and media.

This population is larger than those with all other physical and sensory disabilities combined, and yet it's harder to use a universal solution for everyone within this group (due to the scope of abilities categorized within this group).

Memory and organization are two big challenges that this group has to overcome on a daily basis.