Cognitive accessibility is in short making products accessible for people with cognitive, learning and neurological as well as mental health and behavior disorders that are not necessarily neurological. So this is quite a wide spectrum we have to think about. Please read more about cognitive accessibility on the official W3C page about diverse abilities and barriers (opens in new window).
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines do cover some parts in the existing success criteria and some parts are covering other barriers together with cognitive ones, but it is still a lot uncovered and undefined. I guess that specialized websites try to involve user testing that resolves a lot of the issues on the go and by experience from previous user tests but at the same time feel we really need a generalized guidelines that can help in the same way as WCAG can.
And I am not alone, the subject got a lot of attention and founding, so there are some studies that try to cover the subject before it can be a part of WCAG 3 for example.
Why should you care about cognitive accessibility
Well, besides the obvious – doing the right thing – and besides the fact that WCAG is only a common basis and not the ultimate goal – we should care about cognitive accessibility if we want to reach more people. It’s as simple as this – just look at the demographics and I am sure you will soon understand that if we want to reach aging populations we should not make their experiences difficult. Cognitive accessibility is not only trying to deprecate barriers but is also trying to prevent them in the first place. And making digital products with cognitive accessibility in mind makes their usability way better for everybody, not just people with cognitive disabilities.
New study on inclusive web-accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities
European Commission founded a study that gives a comprehensive research overview on the barriers and guidelines to cognitive accessibility (opens in new window), with several recommendations. I will not go into details, and I suggest that you read it, but I do like to create a short overview that help us to remember the basics, so here it is;
Basic practical guidelines for cognitive accessibility
What is the main message, the most important information on the page? When we know the answer we can focus on wording, not too much text and as little as possible distractions. Writing in plain language and to the point is essential for understanding the message.
What does this button do? Where does this link go to? Understanding the controls before triggering them is crucial. And giving the user ability to prevent errors, cancel or undo actions goes with it. People can actually fear strange effects and we need to help them.
As mentioned – allowing users to focus is often related with preventing of distractions. Auto-playing media, modals and alerts popping up do not allow for proper focus.
Sometimes we need to let users know how much time will a process need. Reading long content can be broken into subpages, the same goes for processes like forms. But at the same time we may cause the user to wonder – will this take 2 minutes or 20? Letting them know about approximate time can make it easier for them.
We all need to memorize hundreds of passwords as it’s not safe to use one for all. And there is the multi-factor authentication that may be very difficult for some users. Second code will be sent via SMS. That means that I must probably switch from my PC to my mobile. This can sometimes and for somebody be a big burden. Maybe we could improve the usability. At least try to.
So to summarize;
- main message must get through with plain language, no distractions,
- understanding button functions and link destinations, allowing undo,
- time management – will this process take 2 or 20 minutes,
- authentication – keep it secure but also simple,
As you can probably understand – these are quite logical usability measures that can help everybody. My guess is that they will become a part of WCAG, if not sooner, the version WCAG 3, but let us not wait until then to start and make them a reality today.