How Do People With Cognitive Disabilities Use The Computer

One of the most frequently overlooked disabilities is cognitive disability. Often times, it is not even listed when talking about disabilities, and legislation does not cover it as other kinds of disabilities. Nevertheless, many people have cognitive disabilities, and the lack of accessibility makes it extremely difficult for them to use the computers.

Cognitive disabilities are definitely not as easy to describe as other physical disabilities. It can include learning disabilities,, brain injuries, intelligence deficits, or language disorders to name a few. You can see from this short list that it is hard to provide one specific solution for all people with cognitive disabilities.

When it comes to people with cognitive disabilities, it is mostly the software which has to be adequately designed. Well-constructed software could potentially eliminate most of the need for assistive technologies. Unlike in my previous posts, instead of explaining the use of assistive technology, I will concentrate on some design features which makes it easier to use the computer for people with cognitive disabilities.

Some people still might use assistive technologies, especially spell checkers, word completion systems and text to speech. These applications help people type more precisely and more effectively, and eliminate the need of reading longer texts, which is one of the biggest challenges of cognitive disabilities.

When designing software, the following should be kept in mind:

Information needs to be presented in an easily understandable manner. Text should be broken down into smaller, easily digestible chunks of text. This also involves text presentation which is understandable for people with lower literacy.

Information should be available through different paths. Instead of providing one way of getting to a certain piece of information, many different methods should be available. One method that is intuitive for some people might not be for others. An example is allowing access to one particular information on a web site through the navigation menu, search functionality, or site maps.

Information should not be cluttered. The amount of information on the screen should not be more than necessary, instead of presenting everything on one screen, functionality and data should be divided into smaller chunks. Also, when offering options or selections, limit the number of choices.

People with cognitive disabilities often times find it easier to have information graphically presented to them, and selectable with the mouse. However, this type of access definitely does not work for people with different types of physical disabilities. Developers should always provide textual and keyboard accessible solutions to all graphical solutions as well.

An example of providing a combination of textual and graphical selections offering limited selections is selecting a country. Users could be offered a list of all the world's countries besides an interactive map, where they can select the continent, followed by selecting a country.

Frequent feedback could also greatly help people with cognitive disabilities. When filling in a form, for example, instead of listing all the errors after submitting the form, it is much more useful to alert the user right away when an error occurs. Also, it is useful to provide mechanisms to return to previous parts of the forms to change, or update data.

Testing if your application is accessible for people with cognitive disabilities can be more complex than testing for other kinds of disabilities. It is recommended to use user groups representing a wide spectrum of cognitive disabilities to test the application.