Insights into Cognitive Web Accessibility

Insights into Cognitive Web Accessibility Jared Smith http://webaim.org

Cognitive and learning disabilities are complex

Principles • Memory • Problem-solving • Attention • Reading, linguistic, and verbal comprehension • Math comprehension • Visual comprehension

Cognitive disability is not a binary state

Cognitive Web Accessibility Principles and techniques that ensure content is as widely available as possible to people with cognitive and learning disabilities

Very Difﬁcult! Why? Previous research is sparse and disparate It’s a very diverse population Recommendations for one disability may disadvantage another Cognitive and learning disabilities have been largely unaddressed in guidelines

WebAIM’s Project • Create an automated web accessibility evaluation tool, similar to WAVE, for cognitive accessibility. • Focus on K-12 students • Provide insight into cognitive and learning disability and web accessibility

Our Goal • Cognitive accessibility principles that are... • broadly applicable • of interest and use to web developers • machine testable

Our Process • Literature review • Broadly applicable • Developer survey • Of interest to web developers • Analysis • Machine testable • User testing • Verify applicability and relevance

Elements Analyzed • Font size • Headings • Images • Line length • Lists • Multimedia • Reading level • Search • Serif vs. sans-serif text

User Testing • Matched Pairs • Tried to isolate the element being analyzed • Measured efﬁciency, effectiveness, and satisfaction/ease • 8 grade 6-12 students with cognitive or learning disabilities

Small font size vs slightly above average font size Larger text was more efﬁcient, effective, and satisfying in nearly all cases

Images paired with text content vs. text content alone

Images paired with text content vs. text content alone 7 out of 8 were more efﬁcient and more satisﬁed with images

Line Length Short (~25 characters) vs. average (~75 characters) vs. long (~120 characters) All subjects took longer on the long line length pages. Little difference between short and average.

Line Length Students perceived the long line length page as being shorter than the others and reported it as being easiest... ...but it actually took them much longer to read it.

Multimedia Seven of the eight students were more efﬁcient and also expressed more user satisfaction from the page with the video instructions than the one with written instructions.

Less conclusive • Headings • Students were slightly more efﬁcient without headings. Though the short subject matter likely affected this. • Students sometimes did not read headings • Lists • Student preferred the page with lists, but were no more efﬁcient with them.

Less conclusive • Reading level • No marked difference (though a very short sample) • Search • Spelling proved difﬁcult. • They took time to choose “the one” correct search result (probably a factor of the testing) • Serif vs. Sans-serif • No marked difference • Many other studies show no difference in WEB readability or comprehension, but signiﬁcant differences in satisfaction.

Initial Findings and Observations Perceived difﬁculty may have a bigger impact than actual difﬁculty

Perceived difﬁculty Page with larger text appeared shorter (though it wasn’t) and was thus perceived as easier. Was the page more efﬁcient because of large text or because it was perceived as easier???

Perceived difﬁculty Make your page LOOK easy

Initial Findings and Observations Conﬁrmation for conﬁdence

Confirmation for confidence Students spent a lot of time finding THE ONE correct answer. Search results were overwhelming.

Confirmation for confidence It wasn't a matter of finding the correct answer, it was a matter of choosing the correct answer. Make your pages simple and intuitive. Provide error recovery mechanisms.

Initial Findings and Observations Distractions

Distractions Keep visual aids clean, simple, and complementary to the content

Initial Findings and Observations Self-paced

Self-paced Multimedia introduces a speciﬁc timing element. Can users keep up? A transcript, a prominent pause feature, and an ability to quickly rewind or replay the video allow users to use multimedia at their own pace.

Initial Findings and Observations Consistency and organization

Consistency and organization While organizational elements (headings, lists, etc.) can help accessibility, they should be clearly differentiable from other elements.

Consistency and organization

Consistency and organization The “Science of Hockey” section was nearly invisible to some students. Some never found it after minutes of reading the page. It was a parallel item to the other sports, but was not presented consistently.

Much more work needs to be done in this area

Questions and Discussion ?

Thank You! Jared Smith http://webaim.org twitter: @jared_w_smith

Insights into Cognitive Web Accessibility

by Jared Smith on Nov 13, 2009

Accessibility

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