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This is a set of papers that describe accessibility issues for users with various cognitive or learning disabilities. Each issue paper takes information from Cognitive Accessibility User Research [coga-user-research] and distills it into a description of the challenges for a specific user group or web usage pattern, and suggests ways to address those challenges. This information informs the Cognitive Accessibility Roadmap and Gap analysis [coga-gap-analysis] in its identification of which solutions remain unmet at this time. The set of issue papers in this publication is not comprehensive and additional ones may be added to future publications of this document.
This document is part of a set of related informative publications from the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force (COGA TF), a joint task force of the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG) and the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) of the Web Accessibility Initiative.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.
Feedback on any aspect of the document is accepted. For this publication, the Working Groups particularly seek feedback on the following questions:
To comment, file an issue in the W3C coga GitHub repository. If this is not feasible, send email to public-coga-comments@w3.org (comment archive). Comments are requested by 16 June 2017. In-progress updates to the document may be viewed in the publicly visible editors' draft.
This document was published by the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force, the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group, and the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group as an Editor's Draft.
Comments regarding this document are welcome. Please send them to public-coga-comments@w3.org (archives).
Publication as an Editor's Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
This document was produced by groups operating under the W3C Patent Policy. The group does not expect this document to become a W3C Recommendation. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures (Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force), a public list of any patent disclosures (Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group), and a public list of any patent disclosures (Accessibility Guidelines Working Group) made in connection with the deliverables of each group; these pages also include instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
This document is governed by the 1 March 2019 W3C Process Document.
What is personalization: Personalization involves tailoring aspects of the user experience to meet the preferences or needs of the user. Technology holds the promise of being extremely flexible and the design of many systems includes the expectation that users will be able to optimize their interaction experience according to their personal preferences or accessibility requirements (needs).
What are user preferences are settings that identify the specifics needs of the individual user. To be effective user preferences should be standardized so that multiple applications can tailor their content to the user needs without each requiring the user to specify preferences.
We need personalization because:
For example, using a familiar design, terms and symbols is key to being able to use the web for people who cannot remember new symbols (such as some people with memory-related impairments like dementia. However, what is familiar for one user may be new for another. Personalization could include loading a set of symbols that is appropriate for the specific user, ensuring that all users find the design and icons simple and familiar.
(See Aging and Dementia [COGA-1] section 3.4.15.3 )
Metadata is another related topic. Metadata allows the user to find content that they can use and suits their personal needs and preferences. A lot of work has been done to define metadata that helps people with physical disabilities find versions of content that they can use. However, the semantics and terms do not provide specific support for the requirements of people with different cognitive disabilities.
This summary pulls together a few different issue papers and addresses them together. They are:Full versions can be found from our wiki.
The following papers are also relevant to the delivery of personalization solutions:
We want to be able to add, remove or change content and features as well as address other issues where personalization can be beneficial. The following are some examples of what is needed.
We need to be able to add content and feature such as:
We need to be able to remove or "hide" confusing elements, such as:
Note that all the information can be behind a "more" button or "legal" link. This will mean that all the information is still available - just not overwhelming.
We need to be able to change user interface components to ones that the user knows how to use such as:
We need to be able to address key issue such as:
Technology holds the promise of being extremely flexible and the design of many systems includes the expectation that users will be able to optimize their interaction experience according to their personal preferences or accessibility requirements. Typical configurable features include color, text and icon size, sounds and mouse double click speed. More comprehensive preferences include enabling different input methods such as speech recognition or assistive technology like screen readers. Other preferences such as language or regional conventions also affect the user's interactions.
People with cognitive disabilities can be become daunted, or worse, completely unable to effectively use preferences to improve their experience on their own. Preference selection is often implemented by providing a range of forms with controls for enabling or choosing options for each preference. These forms can be complex in detail such audio configuration and in size given that some forms are extensive. A specific preference can be hard to locate in control panels with many options even when search and browsing are provided (e.g., Windows control Panel). As a result, some users in this group will be unable set their preferences without assistance.
There are also other potential difficulties after changes to preferences are made. Changes may not be implemented immediately or further action is required for this to happen. It may also be difficult to revert to a previous setting after trailing and rejecting a particular setting.
The use of custom templates of default preferences for particular groups of users is one method by which members of those groups can be immediately provided with potentially useful settings across a wide range of products and services as a starting point. The task for individual users would then be greatly reduced as they would only need to adjust those default settings that did not match their own personal preferences or needs. The ETSI work (see User Profile Management [ETSI-1]) suggests that organizations that represent such groups of users could develop and promote the use of such user profile templates to their client groups.
Selecting "Use typical settings" when installing a program is effectively using a template that defines a well-balanced set of preferences for a typical user. Clicking on one or more check boxes before selecting "Use typical settings" could allow one of two or three alternative templates to be applied. The [ETSI-1] and [ETSI-2] documents listed in the references describe mechanisms for creating, modifying and applying templates.
Commercial services frequently use inference algorithms to infer preferences from user behavior. Such inference methods can also be of value in non-commercial personalization schemes that are solely designed to benefit the user. However, inferred preferences will always be wrong, even if they only fail to capture minor individual quirks. It is therefore important for users that they are able to correct inaccurate inferences.
Another issue is that changes to settings may not take immediate effect, or if they do, it may be difficult to roll back from a setting that was tried out of curiosity but is unsuitable for the user. As a result, people with cognitive disabilities can be become daunted, or worse, completely unable to select their desired preferences. Indeed, depending on the individual and the technology being used, it may be impossible without a supporter's assistance. So specific problems for people with cognitive disabilities include:
In fact, many of these problems effect a wide range of users, not just those with cognitive disabilities.
Another issue is Contextual personalization which includes optimizing the personalization of a product or service to ensure that the personalization is appropriate for the current context of use. For example, settings that will suit the user of a mobile phone in their office or home will not be well suited to that user when they are driving a car.
Interoperable personalization schemes. Interoperable personalization schemes are where users want or need products and services to be personalized, they would prefer or need this to happen across the widest possible range of products or services. Personalization schemes that deliver this ideal will only succeed if they are standardized and if that standard is adopted by the widest range of product and service providers. However, there are many critical issues for any personalization scheme to resolve such as funding and adoption.
Current works in progress are GPII (see [GPII-1] which is compatible with ISO/IEC 24751) and ETSI (see User Profile Management [ETSI-1], Personalization of eHealth systems by using eHealth user profiles (eHealth) [ETSI-3], and Personalization and User Profile Management; Architectural Framework [ETSI-4] ).
The above implementations do not address most what of what we need.
If there is an output we will need data binding.
We need standardized terms and supportive syntax that can be linked to associated symbols, terms, translations and explanations for the individual use, possibly via an aria attribute and personal preferences.
For example, assume an author can make it programmatically known that a button is used to send an email. At the user end, the button could be rendered with a symbol, term, and/or tooltips that are understandable for this particular user. It could automatically integrate with F1 help that explains the send function in simple terms. It could be identified with a keyboard short cut that will always be used for send. In addition, it could be identified as important and always rendered, or rendered as a large button.
Working examples of how this could be used in practice with user preferences are available Full versions can be found from our wiki. It demonstrates personalization for any use - including people with learning and memory issues
It is made of 4 parts:
This is only one example way to use the semantics. Others may follow. It is also worth noting that the GPII [GPII-1] and ETSI [ETSI-1] is working on making user preferences portable which would also enhance this work.
Products for people who are non-verbal often use symbols to help users communicate. These symbols are in fact peoples' language. Unfortunately many of these symbols are both subject to copyright AND are not interoperable. That means end-users can only use one device, and cannot use apps or content from a different company. If we enabled mapping to open sets of symbol codes that, in turn, map to open or proprietary symbol sets, then they can be interoperable. At the user end, the user agent can load the symbols that the user knows. Symbol sets might still be proprietary but they would also be interoperable. That means the end user could use them across different devices, or any compatible content or applications. This is addressed further in the issue paper on symbols for people who are non-verbal.
Most user interfaces are designed to help users complete tasks. However, web security and privacy technologies intentionally introduce barriers to task completion. They require users to perceive more and to do more to complete tasks. Three examples of these technologies are passwords, CAPTCHA, and 2-Factor Authentication.
Web security and privacy technologies often block people with cognitive and/or physical disabilities who may not be able to:
The scope of the problem is vast because, for examples, people with disabilities:
Many people with cognitive disabilities:
Some people with cognitive disabilities may not:
Many people with cognitive disabilities may not:
Some people with cognitive disabilities may not be able to:
People with cognitive disabilities may not focus due to:
Many people with cognitive disabilities may not:
Some people with cognitive disabilities may not:
Some people with cognitive disabilities may not:
Note: The web-form honeypot will not work for popular websites because spammers will likely expend the effort to defeat it.
Textual content can be made easier to understand when delivered in different modes to help people with cognitive disabilities. These modes can include the addition of:
Difficulty of text comprehension by people with cognitive disabilities ranges from minimal to extreme. They may comprehend most of a web page's textual content, or none at all. These can impact people with impairments of:
People with cognitive disabilities may have to:
Issues with working memory may affect ability to multi-task so multi-modal approach needs to be used judiciously with user choice depending on the tasks in hand and the setting.
“Good cues for individuals without EMI (episodic memory impairment) can be more subtle and less central to the experience, whereas good cues for those with memory impairment need to cover the important highlights of the experience so that they can re-learn and re-construct the forgotten experience […] Individuals with EMI are more easily cognitively overloaded, which leads to a need for systems to present a smaller number of only the most powerful cues.”
People with cognitive disabilities may not:
Many people with cognitive disabilities may not:
Some people with cognitive disabilities may not comprehend text because:
Other use cases include:
Text is written communication.
Textual content can be provided in a variety of alternative modes / formats as described below. Ideally, people with cognitive disabilities should be able to choose that content is delivered in the mode they comprehend best. This is an important component of the proposed Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure.
Text-to-speech (TTS) is hardware and/or software that produces human speech by a device such as a computer. Most TTS reads text aloud in a synthesized voice. Other TTS converts symbols, such as those employed by augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), into spoken speech.
Many people with cognitive disabilities, such as Dyslexia, may have the capacity to use a screen reader for TTS. However, people with severe cognitive disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, may require simpler TTS delivery.
A common example is a TTS widget embedded in a website. An alternative is a CSS speech module, as proposed by the W3C. Advantages include that there is nothing to download and install; and learning how to use a TTS widget or a CSS speech module is dramatically simpler than learning how to use a screen reader.
The TTS should be limited to relevant content, and exclude such text as found in menus, footers, and advertisements. Another helpful feature is the visual highlighting of text as it is read aloud. Such features may help people with cognitive disabilities who are overwhelmed even by simple TTS delivery.
Video is a short film clip of moving visual images with or without audio.
To aid comprehension, video with audio should be captioned and/or have audio description, which provides important information not described or spoken in the main sound track. For example, see "Autistic spectrum, captions and audio description".
Further, video and audio should be navigable, such as:
WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion References:
An image is a picture, a representation of a visual perception.
User research has shown that text comprehension is significantly enhanced where accompanied by contextually-relevant images. A picture of an object may be easier to recognize than a textual description of it.
Diagrams and charts as visual representations could be helpful for textual descriptions of processes or flows. Employing HTML Canvas, as proposed by the W3C, diagrams and charts could be interactive and have additional descriptions for their parts to aid comprehension.
An icon is a small image or drawing that commonly represents a function. A graphic is a drawing of a visual perception or an abstract concept, or is otherwise a representation of an object or an idea.
Text accompanied by consistent iconography helps convey meaning, such as by associating discrete textual passages with each other. Similarly, a pie-chart graphic may help convey meaning easier to comprehend than a table of statistics.
What is "consistent" in this context?
A symbol is a sign that represents or suggests an idea, an object, an action, or a belief.
Symbol sets can be used for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to support people with cognitive disabilities who have severe speech and/or language difficulties. This can include those who may understand speech, but who are unable to express what they wish to say, perhaps because of a physical disability. (It is common for people with cognitive disabilities to also have physical disabilities.) Ideally, interoperable symbol sets could be used to replace or to augment web-based text.
Text should be written clearly and simply using the following attributes:
Plain language and clear structure will help comprehension of text-to-speech users.
A distraction is something that prevents someone from concentrating on a chosen object of attention. When using the Internet distractions may draw the user's attention away from primary content, or from the current action being performed.
Distractions may cause issues for Internet users, especially those who have a cognitive impairment.
Drawing the user's attention away from primary content can create a range of issues depending on the user's impairment(s). If a user is consuming content and their attention is drawn away this may impact their ability to consume the primary content or complete an interaction (process). If a user is carrying out a complete multistep action (such as form filling) being distracted may cause the user to lose context, thread or position in the action or sequence of actions.
Distraction may come from many sources. Common sources of distraction include:
Overlays: Overlays partially or completely cover the primary content. This makes it impossible to see content until the overlay is removed. Reasons for using an overlay include but are not restricted to help windows, adverts, surveys, paywalls, in page notifications or animations in the site itself. Examples include, but are not restricted to:
Autoplaying Video/Audio: Advertisements, informational notices or a part of site content. May be in sidebars, or headers/footers or even overlaying content. In some cases advertisements may overlay a page for a period of time while the advert plays.
Social Media sidebars. These often animate to draw attention, and while this is effective at drawing attention to an application they take attention away from the user action (reading. form filling etc).
Adwords or similar. These are things that may look like content or links but are actually adverts inserted into the primary content. Distinction between sponsored content and primary content may not be clear to user.
Sponsored content. Advertising content that is not distinguishable from primary content of page. Advertising content of similar topic injected into page may create understandability issues if not able to be removed (through closing) or in a clear and distinct color or ability to remove. Distinct information making content understandable as sponsored may not be present above the fold and therefore sponsored content keys/footnote may not be memorable if not present on page.
App install prompts on mobile devices. These prompts to install an app to access an online service (website etc) rather than use a browser.
Blinking or scrolling text, scrolling and changes in context and changes in content that are not expected or requested by the user can also distract people and make it hard to focus.
When attention is drawn away from an action (reading, form filling etc) it breaks the user experience sequence and may result in a loss of context, place or position in the action or sequence of actions for those with impaired memory. This may cause the user to need to re-read content repeatedly, return to a previous page, or restart a sequence such as form filling. This will cause the user to need additional time to complete an action which may cause additional time out issues.
Even one disruption of the user experience by distraction may cause users to abandon a task.
Those with impaired executive skills may have difficulty identifying the source of a distraction. They may have difficulty closing pop-ups, this may impact their ability to use a site with pop-up dialogs (messages, adverts, assistance windows).
Those with impaired executive function may have challenges completing time limited tasks, and as such may have that difficulty exacerbated by distractions, especially those that are difficult to close.
Those with impaired executive function may have difficulty identifying embedded adverts such as Adwords etc, and may assume that they are part of content. This may cause issues where products and commercial messages are interpreted as part of content.
It may be difficult for those with impaired executive function to correctly interpret the purpose of the distraction, to differentiate between adverts, pop-up help windows or actual content.
Those with impaired reasoning may have difficulty closing pop-ups, this may impact their ability to use a site with pop-up dialogs (messages, adverts, assistance windows).
Those with impaired reasoning may have challenges completing time limited tasks, and as such may have that difficulty exacerbated by distractions, especially those that are difficult to close.
It may be difficult for those with impaired reasoning function to correctly interpret the purpose of the distraction, to differentiate between adverts, pop-up help windows or actual content.
Those with attention related difficulties will have those difficulties increased by any distraction from Content focus.
Distraction will increase the time taken to consume content, and for those with significant attention related issues could make a site completely unusable.
Those with language related impairments may not be able to understand the context or purpose of a pop-up or help window.
Those with literacy related impairments may not understand the purpose of a pop-up, or any instructions on how to close or deal with the distraction.
Those with literacy related impairments may need use of Text to Speech software (TTS) or other Assistive Technology (AT). AT functionality may be impaired by overlays.
Perception-processing limitations may make it difficult for a user to understand the purpose of a distraction such as a help pop up, or to recognize that the overlay not a part of content. They may have difficulty closing any overlay/pop up or pop over window.
Reduced Knowledge may prevent a user from identifying the nature of a distraction, and hence dealing with that distraction effectively.
Popups are designed to be hard to close making it impossible for some people to continue their task.
The following solutions are not tested, and may be accomplished via existing open standards.
Inform the content provider of needs and accommodations required. This could be done via a User Agent String, JSON file, Metadata or similar. This would allow content providers to modify how distractions are handled, allowing the front loading of any important information etc.
Overlays should not be used where possible.
Where unavoidable the purpose of an Overlay should be clear. Overlay should be easily removed without scrolling. The closing mechanism should be clear easy to find, single click and effective. Closing mechanisms should be consistent, standardized and prominent throughout.
Any overlay should be accessible, and should integrate with any existing AT provision already on the site.
Where possible a user should be able to prevent any Overlays. If Overlays contain important information this information should be front loaded so the user does not miss any information.
Adverts should not automatically start playing (if Audio/Visual).
Notifications - should be easy to dismiss, cancel or opt out of.
Distractions embedded in content should be avoided.
Application install prompts should be clear, accessible and easy to dismiss. Confirmation should be obtained from the user before taking the user to any external site.
Where using an application may further impair a user the user should be clearly informed of any limitations, for example where an application is less accessible than the site itself. Similarly if an application is more accessible than the site itself the user should be informed, for example if the application allows more accommodations/customizations than the site itself.
This is a proposal to help people stay focused and productive. It is based on a matrix for distractions at the operating system , browser or cloud level. Currently people can turn off distractions such as Skype, and Facebook, across different devices, and then may forget to turn them back on. This idea manages all distractions by forming a cross application and cross device distraction matrix that manages all distractions in one setting. People and users can be clustered in terms of importance or groups. For example, the CEO and your child's care giver could both be considered critical contacts. So even if they do not feel the message is urgent they can sometimes disrupt the user anyway. Some family members and important colleagues can be in another group, friends and extended family in a third group, system messages from the compliance system can be a different group again.
Dimensions in the matrix can include: Groups of contacts, how urgent the contact feels any message is, and the level of interruptions the user can tolerate at any given time or setting. The user can set how to handle any combination of the above for the level of concentration needed at the time. For example, during normal work hours, messages from important colleagues could interrupt the user, but any other messages would get logged and read when the user has time. In another example the user may be giving a talk and sets the interruption level to critical. Then, only critical messages from key colleagues and family can interrupt. IE: Messages that a critical contact feels is critical and urgent. Default systems can include setting work hours. Optionally, distractions such as news websites could also be limited in low distraction times.
Further pop-ups and similar distractions must be always consistently easy to close and avoid so that all people can continue their task.
Voice systems are systems that a user interacts with by listening to spoken prompts from an automated system. The user responds by either pressing keys on a telephone keypad or by speaking (or both). Voice systems are widespread in telephone self-service applications for customer support.
It is worth noting that many crucial systems are dependent on this technology such as emergency notification, healthcare appointment reminders or prescription refilling, and others. Therefore full accessibility needs to be supported.
Voice systems are often implemented with the W3C VoiceXML standard and supporting standards from the Voice Browser Working Group.See [voicexml20] and [voicexml21]
However, it is important to emphasize that issues of cognitive accessibility for voice systems apply without regard to whether a voice system is implemented using the W3C voice standards or with a proprietary technology.It is impossible for a user to tell what technologies are used in the underlying voice platform, but the usability principles will be the same whatever the underlying technology is.
An example use case may be as follows:
Voice technology can be very problematic for people with cognitive disabilities, due to its heavy demands on memory and on the ability to understand and produce speech in real time.
A good working memory is essential for using menu-based systems that present several choices to the user and ask them to select one choice, whether by speaking or through a key presss. The user needs hold multiple pieces of transitory information in the mind such as the number that is being presented as an option, whilst processing the terms that follow.
A good short term memory (several seconds) is essential so that the user can remember the number or the term.
Without these functions the user is likely to select the wrong number.
Users need to be able to decide when to act on a menu choice. While a menu is being presented, should they wait to hear more options or should they select a choice that seems correct before hearing all the options?
Limitations of executive function may also cause problems when the system response is too slow. The user may not know whether their input has registered with the system, and consequently may press the key or speak again.
The use needs may need to compare similar options such as "billing", "accounts", "sales" and decide which is the service that is best suited to solve the issue at hand. Without strong reasoning skills the user is likely to select the wrong menu option.
Advertisements and additional, unrequested information also increase the amount of processing required.
The user needs to be able to formulate a spoken response to the prompt before the system "times out" and generates another prompt. In the most common type of speech-recognition system (directed dialog) the user only needs to be able to speak a word or short phrase. However, some systems ("natural language systems") allow the user to describe their issue in detail. While this feature is an advantage for some users because it does not require them to remember menu options, it can be problematic for users with disorders like aphasia who have difficulty speaking.
The user needs to be familiar with the terms used in the menu, even if they are not relevant to the service options required.
Note. The above proposed solutions have been tested for users in the general population and have been shown to improve the usability of voice systems, although the extent to which they have been tested with users with cognitive disabilities is not clear.
Currently VoiceXML does not directly enforce accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities. However, a considerable literature on voice user interface design exists and is in many cases very applicable to cognitive accessibility for voice systems. Developers must become aware of these resources and of the need to design systems with these users in mind.
Online payment systems collect information necessary to enable electronic money movements used for but not limited to the purposes of e-commerce purchases, bill payments, person-to-person payments, transferring funds between account holder accounts, and wire transfers. The typical source of funds includes demand deposit accounts (also known as debit accounts) such as a checking or savings account, or a credit account such as a credit card or home equity line of credit. These systems function as a fast and secure electronic alternative to traditional money movement or payment methods such as checks and money orders.
Providers of online payment systems include financial institutions, e-commerce vendors, billers such as utility companies, government agencies, and online payment companies like PayPal, Official Payments, or Visa. A secure online account may or may not be required to use these systems. In addition to functionality, online payment systems provide access to transactions, and in some cases bills as well.
The terms "online payments", "web payments", "online bill payments", and "online transfers" all involve use of a web-based or mobile app interface for the purpose of consumer to business, person to person, or account to account money movements. Although some differences exist, the learning and cognitive disability challenges presented by all of these payment systems are very similar. Therefor, the terms are used synonymously in this paper.
Online payments provide opportunities for people with disabilities to live more independently, however interfaces poorly designed or not designed at all for learning and cognitive disabilities can lead to errant payments and the possibility of significant personal financial hardships. Full accessibility is a necessary part of the solution to prevent unintended, potentially financially burdensome consequences associated with using online payments.
This use case assumes the person understands the 'shopping cart' concept and has successfully navigated to the payment starting point. The vendor payment system was developed with HTML.
Challenges for people with cognitive disabilities in online payments:
While the use of computer technologies could be effective in helping individuals with cognitive disabilities make online payments, the diversity of ability, conditions, and experience of users with cognitive disabilities can create problems in many online payment situations. The sheer number of different types of cognitive disabilities and effects that they can have on users adds to an already complex issue.
Designing accessible web payment systems for users with cognitive disabilities can present some interesting challenges. Certain individuals may have trouble processing language and numbers, deciphering auditory input, and with comprehending spatial orientation. To understand material regarding web payments, a person must be able to identify information and integrate it into meaningful “pieces” or “components”. A person with a brain injury (or other cognitive impairments) may take longer to think and respond to online stimuli. In a web payment system, multiple windows as well as complex or cluttered displays can create distractions and cognitive processing problems. Extended sequential operations can be likewise distracting to those with memory deficit problems. The use of right and left click buttons on a mouse can create difficulties for users with memory, perception or reflex problems.
Individuals with lower literacy may have different reading patterns than high literacy readers when it comes to understanding web payment material; while high literacy readers scan text, people with low literacy may read the text “word for word”. This reading style can create a narrow field of view. Objects and information essential for successfully completing online payments may be missed when they are not directly in the flow of text a person is reading.
Effect of Memory Impairments: Individuals with working memory issues and short term/long term memory issues can have difficulty with navigation and interacting with the basic functionality of an online payment system. They may have trouble remembering information such as a street address or Zip Code, forget to enter required information, or not know where to go next.
Effect of impaired executive function: Individuals with emotional control/self-monitoring issues, task flexibility limitations, planning/organization/execution difficulties, and impaired judgment may find it hard to progress properly through a myriad of tasks in web payments. They may become easily frustrated or give up.
Effect of impaired reasoning: Those having issues with fluid reasoning, mathematical intelligence limitations, seriation/behavioral/comprehension knowledge, and abstraction difficulties may find it hard to recognize patterns and compute numbers in web payment systems.
Effect of attention-related limitations: Persons with selective attention/divided attention issues may have difficulty separating out the important aspects from the irrelevant ones in a web payment transaction. Persons with a limit on sustained attention may not be able to successfully complete all the steps in a web payment transaction.
Effect of impaired language related functions: Individuals with speech perception or speech issues may not be able to recognize or respond intelligently to spoken commands in a web payments system. Those with literacy difficulties may not be able to properly read the instructions for a web payments system, and thus not know what to do.
Effect of impaired literacy related functions: With difficulties in speech perception and/or visual perception, individuals may not be able to read or understand written or spoken commands regarding web payment information. Issues with phoneme processing may make it hard to properly process auditory cues, and cross-model association difficulties may hinder associations of symbols with meanings in a web payment transaction.
Effect of perception-processing limitations: Visual perception (e.g., object recognition, pattern recognition) issues for certain persons may make it difficult to properly perceive the relative locations and meanings of symbols related to web payment. In addition, auditory/speech, motor, and/or tactile perception limitations may hinder use of web payment systems displayed via those modalities.
Effect of reduced knowledge: People with grammar, metaphorical, and/or lexical knowledge limitations could find it hard to interact correctly with web payment systems using those capabilities to provide critical information for understanding the process. Issues in cultural knowledge and base language knowledge (including the use of jargon, idioms, icons, etc.) may also figure into making a web payment properly as intended.
Effect of impaired understanding of behaviors or consciousness: Improper understanding of behavioral norms, social cues, that may be important in successfully completing a web payment may introduce difficulties for certain persons.
It is important in any proposed solutions to make operational tasks (interacting with a web payment system) as transparent as possible in order for people to focus their attentions on the content related functional aspects of the process. The following solutions support general usability of online payment systems for everyone, in addition to assisting those with cognitive disabilities.
It is desirable to allow the user control of as many aspects of the web payment system as possible. For example, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can be used to provide control of how information is presented. A user interface component can be used to change the CSS definitions for font and font size; change the line height or space between lines of text; increase the size of "clickable" areas; allow for mouse over highlighting of text for easier reading; change the background color of a page; and invert colors and increase contrast on the page. This approach can allow a designer to maintain higher level control over design families while allowing a person to control the presentation to suit their individual needs.
Proposed solutions should address the three categories of human perception:
In particular,
Making a web payment system visually interesting and easy to read can make "listening" to that system difficult (due to the use of graphical spacers and tables, which can disrupt the reading order of related text). The use of database driven text and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can create web payment systems that satisfy the needs of both visual and aural users, while still making it easy to change information and textual data. Additionally, style sheets help to convey context, allow for graceful degradation, and make it available for a greater number of possible browsers to read the code properly.
Access techniques (where necessary) involving using multimedia for interacting with web payment systems should include (at a minimum): captioning, audio description, subtitling, and dubbing. However, a variety of new options for multimedia on the internet have presented themselves.
Cognitive Disabilities and the Web: Where Accessibility and Usability Meet? by The National Center on Disability and Access to Education
Definitions of online payments are at:
The Internet is not always a safe place. Like life off the Internet, everyone is at risk of having crime being a part of their experience online. Usually referred to as cybercrime these activities, including fraud, terrorism, extortion, harassment and hacking are perpetrated by several types of criminals:
People with cognitive disabilities may not be able to easily use some of the common security measures used on the Web such as two-factor authentication and safe and unique passwords.
Extra security precautions to increase password strength often make this group more vulnerable to "human error". This can encourage risky behaviour such as keeping a list of passwords on a desk which can be used by anyone who has physical access to the room. Also, when users ask for assistance to complete these security procedures, they can put themselves at high risk of being abused by those they trust to help.
These cyber-criminals use deception to gain trust and this enables them to negatively influence the behavior of vulnerable individuals. People with cognitive impairment who experience difficulty understanding social cues will likely fail to accurately identify a risky or potentially harmful situation. Those who have difficulty understanding others can act contrary to their own hypothetical actions in a given situation (i.e., mind-blindness) are more trusting and may easily believe false information. Also, people with impaired reasoning, attention or memory may be similarly vulnerable to these situations as they are not especially cognitively equipped to validate presented information.
People with cognitive disabilities may be more at risk of being a victim of a sexual crime. This is more likely if:
Personalization is important, especially as a way to avoid conflict when meeting varying user needs, among many other reasons. However, there is a significant risk that if poorly implemented, user information and vulnerabilities can be exposed. This puts the most vulnerable users of this population at the greatest risk.
Safety should be priority when making content accessibile for people with cognitive disabilities extra care should be applied at the same time to keep them safe.
All user information must be kept safe, to the fullest extent possible. Any clues that the user has cognitive disabilities, such as a request for a simplified version, should be protected information.
Personalization systems should be designed so that any information implying vulnerabilities are on the user device and are secure. Use of functional requirements can also be a safer alternative to describing user needs in systems such as meta-data.
Security should be strong and easily used by those with cognitive disabilities, such as a biometrics option. For a full discussion see the issue paper on security.
Thanks to Crimes against Children Investigations Israel National Cyber Unit for the review.
Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCAs) are devices that have been developed to allow pictures, symbols or words to be used with speech synthesis. The devices may be specialist items with built in systems carrying the symbols. They may also be a generic computer, tablet or mobile with specialist software or apps. The symbols are activated by single or multiple touches, eyes dwelling on a chosen image or manual use of a keyboard or switches. An external input device usually allows for step by step scanning up and down rows and columns of symbols on a grid. Symbols and word choices are personalised to suit the user, representing known objects, actions and happenings.
The users of Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) based on images or pictographs as symbols tend to have no speech or language, very unintelligible speech or difficulties expressing themselves and/or may need reading support. Individuals may also have severe mobility and dexterity disabilities and/or cognitive impairments. Depending on the skills of the user, the environment and task in hand, symbols may be used to represent a phrase or whole sentence of speech or be made up of individual parts of speech to aid sentence making. Where literacy skills are a challenge the use of online communication becomes an issue due to the lack of accurate symbol to text or text to symbol sets that can be used/translate across all symbol systems.
Symbol users may be unable to cope with large amounts of online material. This depends on their ability but may limit the degree to which they can cope with content that is text based.
Symbol users may find it hard to plan a route through web pages unless navigation is clear.
They may have other physical and cognitive impairments affecting their understanding and use of navigation controls.
AAC users may also be overwhelmed by the amount of interactions required to complete tasks.
Symbol users may fail to recognize images, such as symbols or icons that are not in their known set and may lack the ability to use the web as it has been intended, failing to find understandable icons or imagery that provides easy to use navigation or content.
The strategy of mapping symbol sets to a common vocabulary may allow developers to incorporate helpful symbols knowing these can be automatically presented to the user in their own symbol language. This schema would also allow symbol users to use their own symbols in an edit box or form knowing it can be recognised by other symbol users with the automatic translation. The primary solutions for the mapping symbols for symbol users could be divided into three different user scenarios. For all these scenarios, the symbols presented to the symbol users could be alternative and adaptive based on the users' preference.
One option for interoperable symbol mapping uses the proposed syntax: aria-concept = "uri" to reference target concept URI like the following example.
This aria-concept syntax could take advantage of the Concept Coding Framework (CCF). Due to the lack of standardised encoding schemes and common practises, it is difficult to reference to and exchange symbols as an alternative or complement character based texts. Therefore, the CCF provides a common framework to link and map these symbols (currently Blissymbolics and ARASAAC symbols, and eventually other alternative representations) based on the concept coding. For example, the presentation of cat symbol (concept coding: cc-cat-1001) in this scenario would be as follows: for the cat concept: cc-cat-1001, there are different symbols to represent this concept across different symbols providers.
In order to map the symbols from different dictionaries, one of the approaches could be the use of an ontology and Semantic Web technologies to enable interoperability of symbols datasets.
An ontology is a formal specification of a shared conceptualization. In Semantic Web, a vocabulary can be considered as a special form of (usually light-weight) ontology, or sometimes also merely as a collection of URIs with a (usually informally) described meaning. Linked Data is a term used to describe a recommended best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDF (The Resource Description Framework, W3C recommend metadata data model). The Concept Encoding Framework Working Group provides the multilingual and multi-modal lexical ontology (The Lexicon Model for Ontologies of the CCF to be made available in a Linked Open Data (LOD) format. It also allows users to search symbols based on different concepts and metadata, such as language, symbol datasets, localization. The following example demonstrates using the RDFa to represent the mapping between symbols based on concept coding.
This approach mainly requires the symbol dataseat providers to publish the symbols and their concepts as "Linked Open Data". As one of four principles in Linked Data, the URI naming for the concepts could provide the target concept link described in the first solution. It could also provide the alternative same concept symbols based on preferred properties, such as localization, language and colour etc.
Numeracy issues can occur due to a range of difficulties, the most severe being the inability to read or understand numbers. However, the main problems tend to revolve around decoding. When reading measurement an individual with cognitive impairment may understand the concept of 90cms as a length but find it hard to cope with the fact that 0.9m and 900mm are the same length. Individual difficulties include:
Tasks that involve recalling significant amounts of numbers or application including lengthy techniques may be difficult. Examples include, remembering phone and pin numbers, working through an online process such as booking and paying for a train ticket. Shopping online with multiple offers and alternatives.
This involves working memory where individuals may misread and mistype numbers as well as have copying issues. Where numbers look or sound similar these may cause confusion for example, 7 and 9 or 66 and 56 – may be based upon the language and where numbers are read out with no visual cue or may be written with no audio support.
An alternative presentation of numbers may cause problems, so the difference between the calculator keypad, the numbers on a keyboard and a phone pad may result in incorrect numbers being used to unlock or access product services. Cognitive load associated with decoding numbers and symbols should be considered when offering alternative strategies. These alternatives could further exacerbate executive functioning difficulties, for example saying ‘1/5’ as ‘open fraction one over 5 close fraction’ compared to saying ‘one fifth’ – this is to do with the amount said or verbosity.
If there is an impairment of abstract thinking and reasoning, problem solving and working online with numbers in any way will be impacted upon to such an extent that users will be unable to access arithmetical content, use numerical passwords or cope with decision making based on numerical information such as entering vehicle registration numbers where L and O many be confused with 1 and 0 (one and zero), particularly when using lower case.
Items that need to be added to an edit form in a particular manner such as zip codes or postal codes, dates, time, birthdates etc. may also cause confusion.
There are several perceptual difficulties that may impact on numerical ability such sequential processing where comprehension of multiple numerical items in a process may be impacted upon such as addition and subtraction where the order of numbers is crucial. Sequencing difficulties also impact on time and the duration of time or even size of numbers. Auditory perceptual difficulties occur where numbers may appear to be misheard but actually hearing can be good and it is the comprehension that is affected so the number or numerical concept does mean anything. For example the audio CAPTCHA is read out aloud but in the time given the user is unable to process the content.
Visual perceptual difficulties may include spatial and pattern recognition where the user may have problems with diagrammatic representations of numerical and symbolic information. For example extracting information from a graph or diagram, comparing diagrammatic information or where position impacts on the concept – ¾ compared to 4/3.
Reduced knowledge may occur where an individual has sustained a brain injury and prior understanding of numbers and numerical concepts have been lost. This may result in all the aforementioned issues occurring.
The abstract nature of numerical information may be impacted on by a lack of understanding the presentation of problems that are inappropriate to the concept of the user’s environment and lifestyle – this may include items such as examples that are given as comparisons such as weighing as much as an elephant – the user is not talking about elephants but making a comparison between heavy and light.
Notes on proposed solutions: