Cognitive Web Accessibility

W3C First Public Working Draft 07 December 2017. This document is a gap analysis and roadmap for the state of accessibility for people with learning and cognitive disabilities when using the Web and information technologies. It builds on the information presented in Cognitive Accessibility User Research [coga-user-research] and Cognitive Accessibility Issue Papers [coga-issue-papers] to evaluate where user needs remain to be met in technologies and accessibility guidelines. For various […]

"ince then, Watson has embarked on a number of challenges across a variety of domains, from identifying the best cancer treatments to improving weather forecasting. For its latest endeavor, Watson is looking to improve the quality of life for individuals with autism and other cognitive disorders."

"This document is to help us gather techniques and strategies as we come across them, so that they do not get forgotten or are hard to find later when we are finished the gap analysis. Larger scale, engineering solutions can also be added to the issue papers."

The goal of the PCPID 2015 Report to the President is two-fold: 1. To increase the cognitive accessibility of technology that is part of the fabric of everyday lives and strengthen federal policies to ensure that people with ID have equal access to everyday technology, and 2. To increase the availability, quality, and affordability of cognitive support technologies through policies, practices, development, and research.

"Accessibility is about the ability to reach and navigate a place; the opportunity to participate, use, and enjoy a service or facility; and the right to receive information. However, the barriers to accessibility faced by people with intellectual disabilities are not always apparent and, therefore, require exploration and clarification. The main accessibility challenges faced by people with intellectual disability can be categorized by four domains: pace, complexity, literacy, and […]

"Children with Down syndrome, like neurotypical children, are growing up with extensive exposure to computer technology...Our understanding of computer usage by this population is quite limited. Most of the software, games, and Web sites that children with Down syndrome interact with are designed without consideration of their special needs, making the applications less effective or completely inaccessible. We conducted a large-scale survey that collected computer usage information from […]

"To a very large extent, children learn in and out of school from written text. Information Communications Technologies (ICT) offers many possibilities to facilitate learning by confronting children with multimodal texts. In order to be able to implement learning environments that optimally facilitate children's learning, insight is needed into the cognitive processes underlying text comprehension. In this light, the aim of this special issue is to report on new advances in text […]

"Delivering Inclusive Access to Disabled and Elderly Members of the community (DIADEM) is a three year Framework 6 European Union (EU) funded project. The primary goal is to develop the DIADEM application, a plug-in to a web browser that adapts the online-form interface according to users’ needs, making the content more accessible for cognitively impaired older adults. After providing some background information relating to the DIADEM project and the DIADEM application, a trial protocol […]

"Cognitive decline is inherent with age. Despite known cognitive limitations, older adults are generally not taken into account during website design. Understanding age-related differences in website navigation is instructive for website design, especially considering the growing number of older adults who use the Internet. This article presents usability and eye-tracking data from five independent website usability studies that included younger and older participants. Overall results […]

"WCAG 2.0 does make the web accessible to a wider range of people. It also provides guidance on how to make the web more accessible for people with cognitive disabilities; but it is just that, merely Priority AAA guidance. But the required success criteria are primarily designated for individuals with sight, hearing, and motor impairments, while those for cognitive impairment typically remain priority AAA criteria that may or may not be implemented."

"First, we propose a theory of multimedia learning based on the assumptions that humans possess separate systems for processing pictorial and verbal material (dual-channel assumption), each channel is limited in the amount of material that can be processed at one time (limited-capacity assumption), and meaningful learning involves cognitive processing including building connections between pictorial and verbal representations (active-processing assumption). Second, based on the cognitive […]

"Judicious choice of color for text and backgrounds of web and e-learning tools can increase the readability of on-screen text and have the added benefits of minimizing extraneous cognitive load and boosting learning retention. A review of empirical research on color and contrast identifies a set of recommendations for establishing luminance contrast between on-screen text and backgrounds that will inform instructional design and web development practices. Visual cueing, as an element of […]

Information and Communication Technologies play major role in all types of day to day life activities including Government, public and social domains. The need for HCI aspects to be taken care in these activities has become a predominant one. Especially, incorporating HCI features in the academic environment is getting more attention. In the case of reading materials associated with any type of academic process or content delivery, much focus is to be given so that even people with learning […]

"One of the most mentioned problems of web accessibility, as recognized in several different studies, is related to the difficulty regarding the perception of what is or is not clickable in a web page. In particular, a key problem is the recognition of hyperlinks by a specific group of people, namely those with intellectual disabilities...The referred analysis indeed shows that not only did these specific participants gain a better understanding of the demanding task, but also they showed […]

"The purpose of this research is to study the available literature on usability/accessibility ready websites and their tools and guidelines. The research findings will help web engineers to build websites and web services accessible for all the target audience, including people with special needs. A descriptive/interpretive research method was used for the study of usability, accessibility, globalization, readability and culture differences based on related literatures and on previous […]

"The Readability Test Tool provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work. It is the most flexible readability software for assessing readability formulas.The Readability Test Tool takes the text on your web page and gives a score for the most used readability indicators. You can test all, or part of a web page, or simply type in your text. Link directly from your page - it will compute the results for the referring page."

"Children with Moderate Intellectual Disability (MID) and those with Moderate Learning Disability (MLD) are growing up with extensive exposure to computer technology. Computers and computer-related devices have the potential to help these children in education, career development, and independent living. However, most of the software, games, and web sites that MID and MLD children interact with are designed without consideration of their special needs, making the applications less […]

"The Internet facilitates the provision of accessible information to people with learning disabilities. However, problems with navigation and retrieval represent a barrier for this cohort. This article addresses one aspect of page design, testing whether a horizontal or vertical contents arrangement facilitates faster access to content for people with learning disabilities. Participants were timed as they looked for one-word “dummy” menu entries appearing in various locations along a […]

"In our research, we focus on this important issue of e-inclusion and participation of people with intellectual disabilities in social media. In the context of this paper, we will present a methodology on how to evaluate the perceived ease of use of social media applications by people with intellectual disability. Moreover, we will pre-validate this methodology by applying it in a test setting with a customized barrier-free OSN, developed in our research group. This is the first step for […]

"The two-volume set Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8547 and 8548 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP) held in July, 2014. Included are 132 revised full papers and 55 short papers presented"

"Participation in online social networks has considerable potential to empower people with intellectual disability who might experience social isolation in the real world. In this study an accessible online research survey was conducted to learn how adults with intellectual disability use and perceive Facebook. Results from 58 respondents indicated that they use Facebook much as non-disabled users do to connect with family members and real-world friends. The respondents reported challenges […]

Proceedings from the 9th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP), July 2004. The ICCHP is "a scientific conference presenting and discussing reviewed papers published in SPRINGER Lecture Notes in Computer Science".

"The relationship between assistive technology for cognition (ATC) and cognitive function was examined using a systematic review. A literature search identified 89 publications reporting 91 studies of an ATC intervention in a clinical population. The WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) was used to categorize the cognitive domains being assisted and the tasks being performed. Results show that ATC have been used to effectively support cognitive […]

“One of the prerequisites of developing accessible software for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is truly understanding how they use technology, and what their needs and requirements are. The Able to Include Project and partner Building Bridges Training (BBT) from the United Kingdom has held six focus groups with people with intellectual disabilities, and has so far analyzed 53 questionnaires. The focus groups showed that Facebook, Google, YouTube and gaming sites are […]

This guide has “information about cognitive impairment, 14 recommendations on how to improve the accessibility of websites for people with cognitive impairment, a summary checklist and a matrix, which presents the connections between cognitive ability/impairment and the different website elements.”

"This paper combines findings from web search engine research with aspects of disability studies. Therefore, it provides insights for researches, search engine developers and educators in practice on how important accessibility of web search engines for people with disabilities is, how it can be measured and what aspects need to be considered"

Published by the UK's Department of Heath, "The purpose of this document is to provide a set of basic guidelines for people commissioning information in Easy Read aimed at people with learning disabilities."

"In the innovative world of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), there is a continual flow of new information and experiences engaging individuals in the digital era. The use of ICT is increasing and proving to be of greater importance in people’s everyday lives, accessing services to fulfill basic human needs. However, this increase in use and importance of ICT raises concerns to whether these technologies are fully accessible for all people, especially to disabled and […]

"This research study, which was funded by the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, set out to find which methods, and their effects, regarding cognitive accessibility that are documented in the grey literature (academic literature that has not been formally published). Overall the survey revealed a very limited amount of scientific research and that the studies that have been done often included very few people."

"In this paper, we offer set of guidelines and a web service that presents Web texts in a more more accessible way to people with dyslexia. The layout guidelines for developing this service are based on a user study with a group of twenty two dyslexic users. The data collected from our study combines qualitative data from interviews and questionnaires and quantitative data from tests carried out using eye tracking. We analyze and compare both kinds of data and present a set of layout […]

"Much relevant internet-mediated information is inaccessible to people with learning disabilities because of difficulties in navigating the web. This paper reports on the methods undertaken to determine how information can be optimally presented for this cohort. Qualitative work is outlined where attributes relating to site layout affecting usability were elicited. A study comparing web sites of different design layouts exhibiting these attributes is discussed, with the emphasis on […]

"The need for social inclusion, informed choice and the facilitation of independent living for people with learning disabilities (LD) is being emphasised ever more by government, professionals, academics and, indeed, by people with LD themselves, particularly in self-advocacy groups. Achieving goals around inclusion and autonomy requires access to relevant and accessible information. Hence, the project reported here, which revolves around the creation and development of a web site […]

"Using computers as an assistive technology for people with various types of physical and perceptual disabilities has been studied extensively. However, research on computer technology used by individuals with Down syndrome is limited. This paper reports an empirical study that investigated the use of three input techniques (keyboard and mouse, word prediction, and speech recognition) by children and young adults with Down syndrome and neurotypical children. The results suggest that the […]

"Computer usage features in everyday life for the majority of people in developed countries. Access is a problem for many users with intellectual disability. Action-research was conducted to develop and explore the potential of specially adapted, computer readable symbols for choosing and accessing media on a computer. Five people with profound and multiple intellectual disabilities, aged 15–28 years, took part. The symbols were introduced during computer-based activities across four […]

"This paper presents a pictogram-based instant messaging service that intends to bridge the social and digital gap of people with cognitive impairments. By means of using pictograms as the communication language and by tailoring down the interface to suit pictogram-based communication requirements, the service allows users to exchange real-time messages across the Internet to communicate with their relatives and acquaintances. Through our initial evaluation procedure with a group of eleven […]

"The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) consists of 34 codes per person at the one digit level and, at more detailed levels, the number of codes can reach 1,424 items. This degree of complexity has led research groups to develop core sets of ICF codes for specific health conditions and disabilities. The ICF core sets typically include the least number of domains to be practical, but as many as required to sufficiently characterize a specific […]

"The purpose of this study was to identify and synthesize measures for accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities by seeking answers to the following research questions: What measures to make electronic communication accessible to people with cognitive disabilities are evaluated and reported in the scientific literature? What documented effects do these measures have? Empirical studies describing and assessing cognitive accessibility measures were […]

"Difficulties in executing daily living tasks hamper the quality of life of many individuals with cognitive impairments who are otherwise physically mobile. With sufficient and appropriate support on the job, many people with developmental disabilities and cognitive impairments are capable of participating in the world of work to various levels. Kinect is used as assistive technology for individuals with cognitive impairments to achieve the goal of performing task steps independently. In a […]

"With the increasing popularity of mobile technologies, users today are able to access information from virtually anywhere. Examples include localization via the Global Positioning System (GPS), Internet access through cellular and WiFi networks, etc. Using assistive technologies, people with disabilities can live more independently than ever before. However, most of the current mobile applications are not developed with accessibility in mind. This paper uses mobile applications for public […]

"Recent survey research suggests that individuals with Down syndrome use computers for a variety of educational, communication, and entertainment activities. However, there has been no analysis of the actual computer knowledge and skills of employment-aged computer users with Down syndrome. We conducted an ethnographic observation that aims at examining the workplace-related computer skills of expert users with Down syndrome. The results show that expert users with Down syndrome have the […]

"The purpose of the present study was to describe the development and initial testing of a cognitively accessible prototype interface for Facebook, called Endeavor Connect, that was designed to support independent Facebook use by people with intellectual disability. The performance of young adults with intellectual disability when completing five common Facebook tasks was compared when using the Endeavor Connect and Facebook interfaces. Results suggest that, when using Endeavor Connect, […]

"Complex communication needs and problems with accessibility may restrict people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to communicate on the phone. New technology is promising. People with limited skills in reading and writing can communicate on the phone by using symbols representing words or phrases. METHODS: This interview study examines professionals' views of satisfaction, participation and involvement in daily life in seven individuals with cognitive and […]

The Cognitive Technology Database is designed to provide a comprehensive, searchable bibliography of journal articles and recent conference proceedings summarizing research on cognitive technologies for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). The database is structured to allow visitors to identify research articles relevant to their specific needs and is intended to help generate bibliographies for researchers and students, support providers and other professionals, […]

"People with significant speech and motor disabilities often face obstacles attempting to navigate the World Wide Web. This is especially true for the millions of children and adults worldwide who rely on or could benefit from augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). This study was designed to test the usability of WebAACcess, an accessibility enhancement tool designed to bypass some of the barriers to navigating the web. Using a repeated-measures research design, whereby subjects […]

"The Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (ETUQ) was originally designed to investigate the extent to which older adults with cognitive limitations can use the everyday technology that is of relevance to them. The purpose of this study was to explore and evaluate evidence of the validity of ETUQ among adult persons with ID. The original 93-item ETUQ was used to interview 120 adult participants with ID, recruited from a region in northern Sweden. A Rasch model was used to analyse the […]

"The current development of the internet and its growing use makes it necessary to satisfy the needs of all users including those with disabilities having accessibility problems. We developed a new validator software (XValid) based on the WCAG 2.0. We tested 18 countries' sites in 15 categories approximately 500 sites, with XValid. We made a statistical analysis based on our test. We determined the most frequently occurring errors based on these statistics. We took into account these […]

"This review gives an overview of the societal inequalities faced by people with intellectual disabilities, before focusing specifically on challenges people face accessing the Internet. Current access will be outlined along with the societal, support and attitudinal factors that can hinder access. Discussion of carer views of Internet use by people with intellectual disabilities will be covered incorporating consideration of the tension between protection, self-determination and lifestyle […]

"Access iQ spoke with Stefan Johansson, an accessibility expert at Funka, on the major issues associated with web accessibility and cognitive disabilities."

"The purpose of this study was to examine if digital divide exists between elementary school aged children with learning disabilities (LD) and their nondisabled peers in Taiwan."

"Personalization of the e-Learning environments for the 'Cognitively Disabled' is still to be evolved, as personalization cannot be left to the discretion of the disabled user. It has to be done by the supporting people like the teacher, therapist or the parent. This manual intervention can be minimized, using Self-Learning environments, which can interact with the child, understand him and dynamically personalize the lesson plans, based on his interests, mood and current attention span. […]

"By Semantically enabling the Computer Aided Instructional (CAI) content one could bring in intelligence into the e-Learning applications for Persons with Cognitive Disabilities. An e-Learning system with semantic based content extraction mechanism is proposed which uses Hybrid Ontologies that are specifically evolved for teaching children with Autism. Annotation of content with extended properties such as disability, learning styles and pedagogy, enables the e-Learning system to become […]

"The aim of this paper is to present opportunities of multidisciplinary cooperation of university scientist in the field of electronic engineering and computer science, education and rehabilitation, speech pathology, psychology and graphic technology, focused on researching and solving complex problems of alternative communication based on assistive technology. Target groups are persons with complex communication needs such as Down syndrome, autism, Alzheimer's disease, sever intellectual […]

"The Internet is commonly used to seek health-related information, but little is known about the quality of websites on developmental disabilities. Therefore, we sought to evaluate the characteristics and quality of websites located by searching ten common terms related to developmental disabilities and explore relations between website characteristics and website quality in order to make recommendations on ways to ensure locating good online information."

"Audio computer-assisted self-interviews (ACASIs) have safely and effectively obtained sensitive research data from the general public and have been recommended for use with people with disabilities. However, few studies have used ACASIs with people with disabilities and ACASIs have not been used to investigate the relationship between disability, interpersonal violence (IPV), and physical and psychological health among people with developmental disabilities (PWDD). We developed an […]

"...this paper focuses on the design of a summarization tool that provides a summary of reading material which helps the dyslexic to have a first level understanding of the content."

"Easy to Read on the Web” aims at raising awareness and collecting/deriving concise and up-to-date recommendations, guidelines, standards and tools for enhancing the web experience for users with cognitive disabilities and other groups facing problems with “standard” information on the Web." "...this paper discusses the state of the art in Easy to Read on the Web and in related domains and outlines areas of research which should help to better address the needs of people […]

"The importance of accessible Web design significantly rose within the last years. This is also reflected in a growing set of legal regulations that demand for accessible Web design. Unfortunately these regulations usually consider technical accessibility only, the complexity of the language used plays a minor role. Thus a huge group of people cannot make use of the content presented on Web pages. This paper discusses in detail the important interaction of accessible Web design and […]

"The implementation of information that is easy-to-read and easy-to-understand on the Web is crucial to enable the broadest user group possible to make use of information that is presented on Web pages. Besides aspects of technical accessibility in terms of being able to reach the information, readability, understandability and memorability is an essential aspect of accessibility for people with disabilities and more user-friendly for all others. The paper presents different levels of […]

"In this paper, we will cover basic concepts of e-accessibility, universal design and assistive technologies, with a special focus on accessible e-learning systems. Then, we will present recent research works conducted in our research Laboratory LaTICE toward the development of an accessible online learning environment for persons with disabilities from the design and specification step to the implementation. We will present, in particular, the accessible version “MoodleAcc+” of the […]

"At WSE 2001 the theme was Access for All. A decade later, this theme is revisited for WSE 2011. We take this opportunity to discuss the past, present, and future of Web accessibility. Five representative categories of Web accessibility are considered: accommodating disabilities, Web literacy, user interfaces, lingual barriers, and open data."

"Persons with intellectual disabilities benefit from participating in the modern information society, especially the World Wide Web, social media and Internet-mediated communication services." "Overall, the results show that social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities can be improved with customizable communication tools. The implemented communication platform forms a solid basis for further improvements and new communication services. In addition, we found that […]

"Children with intellectual challenges (IC) are growing up with extensive exposure to computer technology." "This paper proposes an assistive education system that dynamically generates multimedia tutorials for children with IC in the state of Qatar. We use several techniques to generate the tutorials which include: Arabic text processing, entities relationship extraction, multimedia-based ontology, and online retrieval of multimedia contents."

"This paper presents a Personal Learning Environment for People with Disabilities, a system that adapts information display in an e-learning environment, according to characteristics and difficulties of a student with mild cognitive disabilities. The Personal Learning Environment for People with Disabilities includes a neural network to classify disability type (sensory orcognitive), which becomes a base to build virtual environments that can adapt and personalize information to students, […]

This paper explores the potential benefits of using mobile webpages to present simpler web content to people with cognitive disabilities. An empirical analysis revealed that the majority of popular mobile sites are smaller than their desktop equivalents with an average of half the viewable content, making them a viable method for simplifying web presentation.

"The growth of cloud computing has encouraged an ecosystem where diverse, task-specific web and mobile applications have flourished. However, this fragmentation of tasks across disparate applications has introduced a level of complexity and separation that can be time-consuming and difficult to navigate for individuals who are older, have cognitive disabilities, or are unfamiliar with web and mobile interfaces. Easy One Communicator is a web application that addresses the complexity of […]

"This paper presents a system for supplying spatial orientation and support to cognitively impaired people in their daily activities. The system is a technological solution based on external aid at a practical level (substitution-based rehabilitation). In particular, we propose a model focused on points of interest or well-known places, in which user-friendly routes to a destination are generated based on the user context rather than the conventional street names and quantitative […]

"We systematically examine sixteen features for predicting the difficulty of health texts using six different machine learning algorithms. Three represent new features not previously examined: medical concept density, specificity (calculated using word-level depth in MeSH); and ambiguity (calculated using the number of UMLS Metathesaurus concepts associated with a word). We examine these features for a binary prediction task on 118,000 simple and difficult sentences from a sentence-aligned […]

"In this paper a set of usability guides for the design and implementation of software for people with Down Syndrome is exposed. We perfomed a usability study to similar software applications available. Based on the obtained results we defined usability guides in order to to design and improve software applications to children users with Down Syndrome. Finally, we show the results through a web tool called “Learning with MINO”."

This chapter in the book: Assistive Technologies (Fourth Edition) Principles and Practice. "The majority of currently available assistive technologies are designed to meet the needs of individuals who have motor or sensory limitations. Those assistive devices are the subject of most of this book. Recently, designers of assistive technologies have turned their attention to the needs of individuals whose limitations are primarily cognitive...This chapter explores applications of cognitive […]

"This book describes a quarter century of computing R&D at the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics, focusing on the needs of individuals with cognitive disabilities from brain injury." "Cognitive Prosthetics Telerehabilitation is a powerful therapy modality. Essential characteristics are delivering service to patients in their own home, having the patient's priority activities be the focus of therapy, using cognitive prosthetic software which applies Patient Centered Design, and […]