Textual content can be delivered in different modes to help people with cognitive disabilities comprehend it. These modes can include:
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.
People with cognitive disabilities may have to:
People with cognitive disabilities may not:
People with cognitive disabilities:
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 comprehend text because:
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 or software that produces human speech by a computer. Most TTS reads text aloud in a 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 text to speech (TTS). However, people with severe cognitive disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, may require simpler TTS delivery. A common one is a TTS widget embedded in a website. Advantages include that there is nothing to download and install; and learning how to use the widget is dramatically simpler than learning how to use a screen reader.
Video is a short film clip of moving visual images with or without audio.
Video should be captioned to aid comprehension, and to aid accessibility for people with hearing issues. It is common for people with cognitive disabilities to have physical disabilities.
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.
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.
A symbol is a sign that represents or suggests an idea, an object, an action, or a belief.
Symbol sets are the basis for augmentative and alternative communication, which is effective for many people with cognitive disabilities. Examples include people who are non-verbal and/or who have Autism. Ideally, interoperable symbol sets would be used to replace or augment web-based text.
Text should be written clearly and simply using the following attributes:
The first 2 attributes, especially the clear structures, will help comprehension via text-to-speech.