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Re: Design Principles for Cognitive Disabilities

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From: Paul R. Bohman
Date: Nov 8, 2006 6:50PM

On 11/8/06, Phil Teare < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> >We don't have the collective experience.
>
> Then I'll offer some.

I appreciate your insight. It's always helpful to hear from someone
who can speak directly from personal experience.

Your list of recommended techniques is a good one. I do have a
question about two of your recommendations:

> 5) offer a variety of interfaces. People like choice, and some people will
> need that 'other alternative'

This seems like a good idea on the surface. I do wonder, however, if
sometimes it is more confusing to have the choice of interfaces. The
choices themselves might cause confusion, or at least they will add to
the clutter of the design. But I'm open to the idea.

What sort of choices would you benefit from? Or what sort of
non-standard additions (or subtractions) from the design would you
like? Or would it be better for you to incorporate your
recommendations into the main design, without having to worry about
going to a separate version of the site?

> An example of a tip for those with English (read: language of content in
> question) as a second language, is offer graphical and audio content, and
> label the help options with the international "i" for information.

I wonder how many people actually click on "information" icons. I
don't know the answer to that question. I just wonder. What sort of
information would be best to offer? The BBC web site
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/) has a link to "Accessibility help" with quite
a bit of information. I don't know that it's necessary for every site
to offer that amount of information. But if they don't, what would
they offer instead? Or would they just link to other sites with that
kind of information, such as the BBC site?

> So please, don't give up before you start.

That's good advice. Even though web accessibility professionals are
committed to the idea of cognitive disability access, I think most of
us keep hoping that someone's going to tell us some definitive answers
on how to do it. Very few are out there trying to achieve it.

--
Paul R. Bohman
Administrative Faculty, College of Education & Human Development
Lead Architect of Web Services, Office of Technology Support
Technology Coordinator, Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities
George Mason University