Cognitive Accessibility

Visual and functional accessibility issues are often easier to identify, test, and correct. But it’s important to be aware that not every barrier of use on a website is the result of a visual or physical limitation. Some users can see your website perfectly and operate it without difficulty—but they may still struggle to use it effectively because of how information is written, organized, or presented. Cognitive accessibility is one of the most overlooked dimensions of accessible design, and the area where businesses are likely to be more unaware of their website’s point of failures. 

What cognitive accessibility is

Cognitive accessibility refers to a website’s ability to be understood, navigated, and used by people with a wide range of cognitive and neurological differences. Unlike visual and functional failures, cognitive barriers are impacted by comprehension, memory, attention, and processing; not perception or operation. Despite affecting a wide and diverse population, cognitive accessibility is often the last area addressed in accessibility work.

Who cognitive accessibility affects

Learning disabilities

Most people with learning disabilities are completely capable of navigating and using websites independently, but they may be impeded, frustrated, or excluded by issues like poor writing styles, cluttered layouts, and font styles. Examples of common learning disabilities that can be affected by barriers to cognitive accessibility include:

• Dyslexia: A condition that affects an individual’s reading ability, making it challenging to accurately recognize words and process text. Formatting choices like center aligned paragraphs; underlined, bold, or italic text; and all-caps lettering, are among the design considerations that increase a dyslexic user’s difficulty. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disorders in adults.
• Dyscalculia: Colloquially referred to as “number dyslexia” or “math dyslexia” this is a learning disorder that causes difficulties with understanding numeric values, quantities, and mathematic concepts. The condition can make it challenging to handle money and manage time. It can also affect a person’s ability to remember numeric related information such as quantities on a shopping list, PIN numbers, and instructions. Rounding to whole numbers (unless decimals are required), providing explicit context when presenting numeric information, and presenting numbers with appropriate spacing can help users with dyscalculia to better process information.

Attention and executive function differences

Conditions like ADHD can affect an individual’s ability to sustain attention, their working memory, and the ability to filter relevant from irrelevant information. Users with this condition may be more likely to loose their place while reading, struggle to complete multi-step processes (especially if the length of the process is unknown), and be pulled off task by visually distracting elements. Common mistakes like auto-playing media, busy layouts, and vague call-to-actions can negatively affect these user’s experiences.

Memory and processing conditions

Often developed as a result of brain injuries, stroke, and dementia; these conditions affect someone’s memory processing speed and ability to follow complex sequences. Users with these conditions may find themselves having to re-read content, straining to remember information or actions from previous pages, and struggling with unfamiliar interactions. Common issues that make experiences more difficult for these users include sessions that expire unexpectedly, actions an forms with no confirmation or feedback when completed, and inconsistent navigation.

Autism spectrum

This condition can cause variation in how language is processed—causing literal interpretation of figurative language, challenges with understanding ambiguity, and creating a preference for predictability. Common issues rise when idioms and colloquilisms re used without explanation (this can also be challenging for non-native language users), unexpected interaction patterns, and unclear instructions. All users, and especially those on the autism spectrum, benefit from explicit, literal language and consistent, predictable interfaces within an experience.

Anxiety and mental health conditions

These conditions can impact how users react to uncertainty, error states, and pressure. Common issues that can negatively affect these users include implementing time limits, showing alarming or extraneous error messages, and failing to define the expected result of an action.

Situational and temporary cognitive load

Cognitive capacity can be temporarily impacted for any user—impacted by stress, fatigue, distraction, and multitasking. Any user who is tired or distracted will be experiencing reduced processing capacity and is more likely to become overwhelmed, frustrated, or suffer decision fatigue. Ensuring your website content is clear, well-organized, and written in plain-language will help reduce the impact of these factors and facilitate the experience for all users.

Common problems for cognitive accessibility

Dense, complex writing

Try to avoid long sentences, passive voice, and industry jargon that excludes and confuses users. These issues can be particularly damaging on key pages like services, pricing, contact, and checkout.

Inconsistent navigation and layout

Whenever elements like menus, buttons, and page structures shift or change between pages, users can become disoriented and confused—especially those with existing memory or processing challenges. Predictability is an essential aspect of creating a quality and accessible website, regardless of the user.

Unclear error messages

Validation that only states that an error exists—but does not explain what the error is or how to correct it—can cause unnecessary friction, frustration, and mental load. This is particularly impactful for users already dealing with anxiety, learning disabilities, or processing differences.

Multi-step processes

Users with attention or memory challenges are more likely to abandon lengthy processes, especially if the length and requirements are unclear. Splitting up flows like signup, checkout, and booking into multi-step sequences is becoming increasingly popular. While some complicated processes benefit and become easier to use when broken into parts, doing so unnecessarily may make a process feel longer and more ardous to complete. Whenever you have a multi-step process on your website make sure to include clear progress indicators and insights into the remaining steps to help prevent users from becoming overwhelmed and abandoning.

Auto-playing and moving content

In addition to the potential to impact your website’s performance and SEO, auto-playing audio and video media can be jarring to a user’s senses—effectively hijacking their attention. This can be especially disorienting for users with ADHD or sensory sensitivities. If there is animated or automatically moving/progressing content it is important to provide a way for users to pause or disable the motion. Being unable to do so can make it incredibly difficult to focus, and for some users impossible to read or focus on a task.

Visual complexity

Too many competing elements, calls to actions, or visual styles within a page can overwhelm users; especially those with an already limited capacity for attention.

Situational examples of cognitive accessibility

While accessible design will always improve the overall user experience, regardless of disability, cognitive accessibility is an area where that impact becomes particularly significant. While there are numerous conditions and disabilities that impact an individual’s focus and comprehension, everyone’s focus and comprehension is improved by accommodations like:

• Short, clear sentences improve everyone’s reading speed
• Clear instructions and explicit language makes task recognition and completion easier for all.
• All users (especially new ones) will be able to navigate more easily and confidently when menus and layouts are consistent site-wide.

In short, wiring and formatting your website to support cognitive accessibility doesn’t mean oversimplifying it for some users at the expense of others—everyone benefits.

Why cognitive accessibility matters for small businesses

Cognitive accessibility failures are less likely to create the clear cut barriers (and consequently, complaints) like visual and functional accessibility issues do. Rather, users experience frustration and annoyance—maybe blaming your website, maybe blaming themselves—and abandon.

Unlike other accessibility issues that may require more design/development support, these issues can be largely improved through content, writing, and text formatting decisions. This puts a majority of cognitive accessibility improvements within easy reach of small business owners to improve and implement themselves.

Ultimately, cognitive accessibility improves the ability of all users to understand and navigate your website better. A website that is easier to used is more likely to experience better conversions and longer visitor retention.