About people with cognitive and learning disabilities

People with cognitive and learning disabilities may experience difficulties with many of the cognitive activities often required to interact with technology and understand content. This can create accessibility barriers with many tasks, including:

• Reading, writing, communication, and both aural and visual language processing,
• Understanding or performing numerical tasks such as mathematical equations or recognizing time
• Remembering or processing new information, and
• Following instructions or performing ordered tasks.

This is not exhaustive. For a more in-depth understanding of the experiences of individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities, read the companion document to this guidance:

About People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities 🔗

Personas

2.2.1 Amy: an autistic computer scientist

Support with logical information architecture, reduced visual stimulation, and clear language

+ Expand

Amy loved her computer science course and now programs in several languages. She has discovered she can visualize the outcome of her coding and is quick to find any errors even if they are not highlighted. Writing documentation is less fun and she is too concise. This means some users do not receive enough help using her applications.Some of the scenarios in which Amy experiences accessibility barriers:

• Coping with ambiguous or dense layouts and illogical navigation
• Changing color schemes, automatic blinking, flashing, and autoplay on video or music
• Designs that make use of abstract imagery and metaphors

Learn more about Amy and how to design accessible experiences for her 🔗

 

2.2.2 Persona 2 Name

Byline for the persona that sets them up as a person, not a diagnosis

+ Expand

Placeholder for content, not yet written for prototype

2.2.3 Persona n Name

Byline for the persona that sets them up as a person, not a diagnosis

+ Expand

Placeholder for content, not yet written for prototype

Stories, use cases, and functional needs

For people with cognitive and learning disabilities, meeting the design objectives in this document and addressing the specific functional needs of these individual can be the difference between being able to use the site or not being able to use it at all. This may also be true for people with mental health issues or under temporary stress.

User needs for people with cognitive and learning disabilities often help other users, although they can usually manage to use the site without these user needs being met.

The stories, use cases, and functional needs that will provide a solid foundation for making content usable for individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities detailed in the companion document to this guidance, About people with cognitive and learning disabilities.

Build the user into the process

A thoughtful user-centered design process will result in more accessible and usable products for individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities, and will likely lead to easier to use products for everyone, overall. Key parts of this process for people with cognitive and learning disabilities should be:

• Including the needs of users with cognitive and learning disabilities in the context of user needs and requirements.
• Including people with cognitive and learning disabilities in research methods such as usability testing.
• Including people with cognitive and learning disabilities in the design and development team.
• Web sites that include people with cognitive and learning disabilities in usability testing and account for their feedback will be easier to use for everyone, including people who are experiencing stress, or mental health issues.

For resources to help you make these processes achievable for you, no matter the size of your organization, read our companion document:

Building for people with cognitive and learning disabilities into the process 🔗

Objective 1: Design is clear and helpful

The visual, aural, and media design supports the user to easily understand the purpose and meaning of components, the hierarchy of the page and site, and how to navigate the layouts.

1. Which roles typically do this? Designers and information architects.
2. When is this typically done? During the design phase and in the creation of content and visual assets.
3. Which part of the process can break this? Implementation, especially when 3P tooling or resources are introduced.

Patterns for achieving a helpful design:

Objective 2: Interactions are clear and straightforward

The flows, tasks, and events provide clarity for the user to understand how to interact with the system, and what will and has happened based on how they interact with the interface.

1. Which roles typically do this? User experience and interaction designers, content strategists, and technical leads.
2. When is this typically done? During both the interaction design and engineering design phases.
3. Which part of the process can break this? Implementation, especially when 3P tooling or resources are introduced.

Patterns for achieving clear and straightforward interactions:

Objective 3: Functionality is supportive

Functionality is incorporated to proactively help the user “behind the scenes,” and/or provides the user with customization / personalization options.

1. Which roles typically do this? Engineers, coders, often with design considerations.
2. When is this typically done? Implementation (Eng), including selection of 3P tooling.
3. Which part of the process can break this? UX design, UX writing, content strategy.

Patterns for supportive functionality:

Objective 4: Content is understandable

The language, imagery, media, and other content is easy to understand, and/or provides other ways to be understood by those who are better supported with other formats.

1. Which roles typically do this? Content folks, visual designers, media creators.
2. When is this typically done? Content creation, entry, edits.
3. Which part of the process can break this? Any.

Patterns for understandable content:

Scaffolded

+ Expand all

Provide alternate content for complex information and tasks

+ Expand

Prototype - content not yet added

Provide alternatives for numerical concepts

+ Expand

Prototype - content not yet added

Use icons that help the user

+ Expand

📖 A user story

As a user with complex communication needs that may include a mild language impairment, I want symbols that help me understand the content.

More stories and user needs around icon support for the user 🔗

✅ What to do

Add familiar icons, images, and symbols to important content such as controls and section headings. Each icon or symbol should convey a single meaning and be next to the content it relates to.

✓ Use common icons that the user is likely to understand.

Icons can be especially helpful next to contact, help, and search content, and in callout boxes.

✓ Provide common icons next to key texts, headings, media sections, “contact us” buttons, and "help" buttons.Use clear and unambiguous icons or symbols that are easy to see and enlarge.

⭐ Helpful

Start each item in a list (such as a select list as in this example, or instructions in a recipe) with an icon that relates to it.

ℹ️ Caution

Not including icons in this select list may create a barrier for people who have difficulty reading or understanding flower names.

✓ Be aware of cultural differences.

For example, a shopping cart icon ( 🛒 ) may not be helpful in locations where people typically use baskets ( 🧺 ).

✓ In left-to-right languages, when adding a few icons or symbols to a page place the image to the left of the text.

In left-to-right languages, the icon would be on the left of the text, at the beginning of the word. In right-to-left languages, the icon would ideally be on the right, also at the beginning of the word. In vertical languages, the icon may be most effective at the top.

✓ When adding multiple symbols to a paragraph or section of text, place the symbols above the text.

⭐ Helpful

For someone who benefits from the icons, they can help to tell the story along with the words.

ℹ️ Caution

Too many icons can easily become overwhelming even for those they help.

✓ Use personalization semantics such as [personalization-semantics-1.0] to help the user load familiar symbols.

🎯 How it helps

People who have language comprehension, learning, or reading difficulties may rely on symbols to understand content and navigate to content they need. Symbols also help people who struggle with language and attention to navigate content, including media. Clear symbols, icons, and images can also act as signposts to help individuals find what they need.

More on how symbols can help individuals with content understanding and navigation 🔗

Avoid all caps in written content

+ Expand

Prototype - content not yet added

Avoid centering or full justifying text that runs more than 2 lines

+ Expand

Prototype - content not yet added

Include symbols and letters necessary to decipher the words

+ Expand

Prototype - content not yet added

Use familiar metrics and units

+ Expand

Prototype - content not yet added

Objective 5: Help is available and usable

The user is able to complete their journey in an alternate way - including potentially outside of the system - if they choose to.

1. Which roles typically do this? Product, though this also has to be designed and implemented.
2. When is this typically done? Early in project planning, as a user journey.
3. Which part of the process can break this? Any, especially launch.

Patterns for achieving available and usable help: