Accessibility   helps more than just people who are blind. There are five disability types that are commonly considered in digital accessibility: seeing, hearing, speaking, moving and thinking. For this article, “thinking” includes disabilities that impact emotions, problem-solving, memory and other ways we use our brain.

Why is digital accessibility so important? Imagine if you could not use your smartphone, TV or computer by yourself. According to a 2018 Nielsen study, “American adults spend over 11 hours per day listening to, watching, reading or generally interacting with [digital] media.” Technology is not just for play. We use technology every day to be successful at work, at school, and in our lives.

In this post, we focus on how to make technologies accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, a type of disability that is often overlooked.

Cognitive Disabilities and Skills

To make technology accessible for people with cognitive disabilities, we need to have a broad understanding of these types of disabilities. A disability is a condition that limits a major life activity. Communicating, learning and working are examples of major life activities. Some types of cognitive disabilities are aphasia, autism, attention deficit, dyslexia, dyscalculia, intellectual and memory loss.

These types of cognitive disabilities are just the beginning, there are many more types of cognitive disabilities.

Some webmasters, software designers and developers may not have ever interacted or observed a person with a cognitive disability. However, webmasters, designers, and developers love to solve problems. Below are simple to understand descriptions of the problems people with cognitive disabilities encounter. Let’s talk about words and phrases you can use to describe problems or barriers you may find:

• Attention – ability to focus and keep focused on the current task

• Processing Speed – the rate at which the brain handles information

• Short-Term Memory – the ability to retain information for short periods of time

• Long-Term Memory – the ability to store and recall information for later use

• Logic & Reasoning – the ability to reason, prioritize and plan

• Language Processing – the ability to recognize letters and words and the ability to understand written or spoken language

• Math Processing – the ability to recognize numbers and symbols and the ability to understand and calculate simple math

The first three skills (attention, processing speed, and short-term memory) are part of automatic processing. The last four skills (long-term memory, logic and reasoning, language processing and math processing) are part of higher thinking. The diagram below shows how information is input into our brain, flows through automatic processing, can tap into higher thinking, and results in output (a decision).

Figure 2: Thinking Flow Diagram: Input to automatic processing group (attention, processing speed, short-term memory), leading to higher thinking group. The higher thinking skills each interact with a decision cog: long-term memory, logic and reasoning, language processing, math processing. The decision cog leads to output.

Let’s try out an example using the Thinking Flow Diagram above. Here is a sample task: buy the ebook you need. Imagine you are shopping online for an ebook you need for work or school. Your computer has a fingerprint reader. You log on to your favorite online bookshop using your fingerprint. You find the book you need.

Here are the cognitive skills you applied:

• Automatic Processing

  • Attention – you kept your attention on the task for buying this book (even if you get interrupted by a phone call or a text message).

  • Processing Speed – luckily, this site does not have any time limits, so you were able to take all the time you needed to read the information on the site.

  • Short-Term Memory – this site was relatively short, so you didn’t have to remember what was at the beginning of the page by the time you reach the bottom of the page.

• Higher Thinking

  • Logic & Reasoning – you considered all the different book formats.

  • Language Processing – you recognized the letters and words on the page and were able to read the information about this book and find the button to buy the book. Or, to process this text, you needed it to be read out loud to you by your assistive technology.

  • Math Processing – you recognized the numbers that represent the price of the book and calculated if you can afford it based on how much money you have.

• Decision

  • You made the choice to press the “Buy Now” button (which you have set up so it will automatically charge to your credit card).

Besides the potential accessibility blockers listed above, there are other types of accessibility blockers that people with cognitive disabilities could encounter that people might not be aware of. For example, some people with reading disabilities use assistive technologies to read what is written on the page aloud. If content, such as an image, is not properly made accessible to a screen reader, this could also be inaccessible to a person with a cognitive disability.