Designing for cognitive disabilities

Designing for cognitive disabilities
by Ruth Ellison
at UX Australia 2011
on 25 August 2011
@RuthEllison
From @StamfordUX
Image credit: My Brain by My Name is Rom ™ from http://www.flickr.com/photos/romsimplicio/2615636782/
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license

Work at Stamford Interactive
Live in Canberra
Chocolate appreciator
Love robots
Hi, I’m Ruth
Love gadgets
Caricature by the talented Hayley Welsh
User experience designer
Skeptic and critical thinker

What are cognitive disabilities?
...any sort of cognitive disorder that impairs understanding and functioning.
Australian Human Rights Commissionhttp://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/publications/preventing_crime/part1.html#fn1

Not binary
Cognitive disabilities range greatly in severity
Dad: bad with numbers
Richard Branson: dyslexia
profound
mild impairment
Grandma: bad memory

There is no one-size-fits-allrule

Proloquo2Go™

Functional groupings
Memory
Problem solving
Math comprehension
Attention
Reading, linguistic and verbal comprehension
Visual comprehension
From Bohman & Anderson’s functional cognitive disabilities model, 2005 and http://webaim.org/articles/cognitive/

Tips For an inclusive user experience

Tip #1: Indicate progress
Memory
Provide simple reminders such as a progress bar
Consider labelling each step
Source of images: https://www.threadless.com/cart/step/shipping-info

Tip #2:help recover from errors
Error messages should be as explanatory as possible
Tell users what they did wrong and how to fix the problem
Problem solving

Tip #3: be predictable
Ensure that navigation is consistent throughout the siteSimilar interface elements and similar interactions should produce predictably similar results
Memory
Source: http://wave.webaim.org/cognitive

Tip #4: avoid distractions
Avoid distracting background images, noises or moving elements
Attention
Source: http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/mag35.html

Tip #5: allow user to control movement and timing
Allow users to control content updates or changes.
Attention

Tip #6: calculate it automatically
Math comprehension

Tip #7: be multi-modal
The more ways to convey your content, the easier it becomes to communicate to others.
Pair icons or graphics with text to provide contextual cues and help with content comprehension
Basic Tango Steps for Men
Step forward with your left foot
Step forward with your right foot passing the left foot
Step forward again with your left foot, this time passing the right foot
Step forward and to the right with your right foot
Left foot close to right foot
Visual comprehension
Source: http://www.dancing4beginners.com/tango-steps.htm
Source: http://wave.webaim.org/cognitive

Tip #8: plain language
http://wilsworldofwords.com/2010/06/english-picture-idioms-raining-cats-and-dogs.html

Tip #9: left align
Source: (text) http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html, http://www.pws-ltd.com/sections/articles/2009/justified_text.html

In many cases, the techniques for making web content more accessible to people with cognitive disabilities are nothing more than techniques for effective communication.
WebAIM http://webaim.org/articles/cognitive/activity

Useful resources
Clear Helper: Web Accessibility for People with Intellectual / Cognitive Disabilities http://clearhelper.wordpress.com/
Cognitive Disabilities Part 1: We Still Know Too Little, and We Do Even Less, Bohman, Paul. 2004. from http://webaim.org/articles/cognitive/cognitive_too_little/
Cognitive Disabilities and the Web: Where Accessibility and Usability Meet? By Mariger, Heather. from http://ncdae.org/tools/cognitive/
What Problems Do People with Disabilities Have? and Why?, from http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/software_guidelines/software.pcs/disabil.htm
How People with Disabilities Use the Web by W3C, from http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/people-use-web/Overview.html
The Forgotten People: Designing for Cognitive Disability, from http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200607/the-forgotten-people-designing-for-cognitive-disability/
An Accessibility Frontier: Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties, Hudson, Roger., Weakley, R. And Firminger, P. from http://www.usability.com.au/resources/cognitive.cfm
Evaluating Cognitive Web Accessibility, fromhttp://webaim.org/articles/evaluatingcognitive/
Ruth Ellison’s cognitive disabilities bookmarks: http://www.delicious.com/RuthEllison/accessibility+cognitive

Ruth Ellison
Email: ruthe@stamfordinteractive.com.au
Web: www.stamfordinteractive.com.au
@RuthEllison
@StamfordUX
Find this presentation at www.slideshare.net/ruthellison

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Designing for cognitive disabilities

by Ruth Ellison on Aug 24, 2011

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