Understanding cognitive impairment ...

The concept of cognitive disabilities is extremely broad and not always well defined. The general idea is that a person with a cognitive disability has greater difficulty with one or more types of intellectual activities that the average person. There are too many types of cognitive disabilities to list them all here, but we'll see some of the major categories. Most cognitive disabilities are a common explanation in biology or physiology of the person. The link between a person's biology and mental processes is most obvious in the case of head injuries and genetic disorders, but even the more subtle cognitive disabilities often come from the structure or brain chemistry.

A person with a profound cognitive disability needs assistance in almost every aspect of daily life. Someone with minor learning difficulties can live correctly despite the handicap, perhaps even without that it is never discovered or diagnosed. Yes, the big differences between the mental abilities of people with cognitive disabilities complicates matters somewhat. In fact, we can reasonably argue that many web content can not be made ​​accessible to people with profound cognitive disabilities, no matter how hard the developer. Some content will still be too complex for certain audiences. This is inevitable. However, there are a number of things developers can do to increase the accessibility of Web content to people with less severe cognitive disabilities.

Cognitive impairment in functional impairment or clinical status

There are at least two ways of classifying cognitive disabilities: the functional disability or clinical status. Clinical diagnoses of cognitive concern autism, Down syndrome (trisomy 21), cranial trauma (CT) and even dementia. Less severe cognitive disabilities relate to attention disorders (LD), dyslexia (difficulty reading), dyscalculia (difficulty with mathematics learning) and learning difficulties in general. The clinical diagnosis can be useful from a medical perspective for the treatment, but in terms of web accessibility, grading cognitive disabilities by functional impairment is more useful. Consider the functional deficiencies can not be fixed on the medical causes of behavior or related to disability, but rather it can focus on the person's abilities and challenges. The main categories of functional consequences of cognitive deficits concern or difficulties with:

1. memory
2. problem solving
3. attention
4. reading, language and verbal comprehension
5. understanding of mathematics
6. visual understanding

The main reason why the study of functional impairment is more useful when considering the accessibility of the Web is that they are more directly related to the concerns of web developers. Tell a developer that some people with autism are not very useful unless the developer knows what kinds of obstacles facing a person with autism. On the other hand, tell a developer that some people have difficulty understanding mathematics provides a framework for him to consider the needs of this type of audience.

In addition, clinical diagnoses are not mutually exclusive on the difficulties faced by people with cognitive disabilities. There is often an overlap of functional limitations among different clinical diagnoses. A person with memory problems may also have difficulty with attention or problem solving for example. This type of overlap is a medical model, but it is not particularly useful for web developers who simply need to know what the person can or can not do.

Memory

Memory refers to a person's ability to remember what she learned over time. A current model to explain the memory comes in immediate memory, in short-term memory and long-term memory. Useful information will usually live to follow the chain of short-term memory to short-term memory to be stored then in the long-term memory. Some people with cognitive disabilities have difficulty with one, two or three of these types of memory. More content makes sense for the needs of the user, the more likely it is that information is stored in the brain. Some users may have memory difficulties that hinder their ability to remember how they got to the website content.

Problem solving

Some people with cognitive disabilities have trouble solving problems as they arise. In many cases, their resilience can be low and frustration is such that they choose to leave the site and do not try to solve the problem. An example of this situation is the presence of a 404 from a bad link or a link that leads to a different destination than they believed he was leading.

The attention

There are many people who have difficulty focusing their attention on the task at hand. Distractions such as scrolling text and icons that flash can make the Web difficult environment. Even for users without disabilities the presence of blinking and scrolling items or the appearance of several windows can be irritating. A quality design will limit these cases to what is necessary to transmit the content.

Some people with Hyperactivity Disorder Attention Deficit (ADHD) have difficulty learning, but this is often due to their distraction rather than their inability to process information. People with ADHD may be impulsive, easily distracted and inattentive. On a more positive note, some people with attention deficits are very creative and very productive over short durations. They are full of energy and enthusiasm. On a less positive note, it may be difficult for people with ADHD to concentrate on a task over a long period of time. On the Web, flashing banner ads can be annoying, and all that attracts the attention of someone outside the main content.

Reading comprehension and oral language

Some people have difficulty understanding texts. These difficulties can be mild or severe, up to the inability to read text. It would be unreasonable to require developers to adapt their Web texts to the diverse reading needs. The difference between the non-readers and readers of genius is simply too great. However, it is reasonable to ask developers to write as simply and clearly as possible, thereby taking into account the needs of the public with problems on some content. After all, an estimated 15 to 20% of the population has difficulty understanding speech or text.

Although it is difficult to verify, it is commonly accepted that many great leaders and intellectuals had difficulty reading and / or spellings such as Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Leonardo da Vinci and others. The general idea is to keep in mind that the authors can not know if their readers have difficulty reading or not. This is information often kept secret.

Understanding of mathematics

The mathematical expressions are not always easy to understand for everyone. This does not mean that authors should avoid any mathematical calculation. For people who are comfortable with reading and mathematical thinking, the best way to explain mathematical concepts is to use equations. On the other hand, it is often helpful to explain conceptually mathematics with or without formulas. The conceptual explanations help readers understand the reasoning behind the calculation.

Visual understanding

Some people have difficulty understanding the visual information. In many ways, this is the reverse of the problems experienced by people with difficulty reading and speaking. People with a visual difficulty of understanding may be difficult to recognize objects for what they are. They can recognize the fact that there are objects on a webpage, but not be able to identify these objects. For example, they may not know that the photograph of a person is a representation of that person although they can clearly see the picture (as an object) on the web page.

For these people, a person moving and speaking in a video may be easier to identify and understand a static picture of a person in a photo. Video and multimedia, accompanied by a narrative, can be the best means to communicate with these people.