Slide 1 My project is about making websites more usable for people with cognitive disabilities... Slide 2 - The idea of this project came from my younger sister, who has a learning disability. She often get’s upset and frustrated when using websites. - My overall aim for the project is to make sure that users such as my sister no longer struggle when using websites. - Although people with cognitive disabilities are the largest disability community worldwide, there is no set guidelines when it comes to creating websites for these users – and they are often not considered. Slide 5 there are also functional definitions, which everyone can often relate to. Sometimes it is more useful to avoid the medical perspective of cognitive disability and view them from a functional perspective instead. A Functional disability perspective ignores the medical and behavioural causes of cognitive disability and focuses on the abilities and challenges the person with a cognitive disability faces.  Slide 7 There were also 16 steps created in 2010 as a guidance by the British Standards in the 8878 web accessibility document. British Standards are the standards produced by BSI Group which is incorporated under a Royal Charter (and which is formally designated as the National Standards Body (NSB) for the UK). They aim to help improve the way companies work and they process taken to ensure excellence. Slide 8 - a list I have created of what designers and developers can do to help improve website for people with cognitive disabilities – where as the British Standards is for disabilities overall. This is based on what I have learnt from all my research and experience throughout doing the project. Slide 9 Finding participants: Searching for participants with cognitive disabilities who want to be involved in user testing was difficult. To solve this problem I contacted around 20 local disability organisations, of which only two replied. These two organisations let me attend their community meetings where I presented my project and asked who wanted to get involved. Overall, I have now conducted user test’s on 20 different participants, all with a cognitive learning difficulty or disability. Method and evaluating: I made my decision on how to collect my user testing results based on talks with professionals and reading I had done on other methods used. Slide 10 Based on my research and testing results I am currently building an exemplar website which will provide a guide for designers and developers about creating accessible websites for users with cognitive disabilities. I will do this by showing a process with different areas they can do when building a website to help improve the understanding of their users varied abilities and the overall final website.

1. Creating a content rich and
accessible website for users
with cognitive disabilities
Rebecca Topps
Web and multimedia student at University of Central Lancashire

3. What are cognitive disabilities?
...any sort of cognitive disorder that
impairs understanding and functioning.
Australian Human Rights Commission
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/public
ations/preventing_crime/part1.html#fn1
...a person with a cognitive disability has
greater difficulty with one or more types
of mental tasks than the average person.
WebAIM: Cognitive disabilities
http://webaim.org/articles/cognitive/

5. Memory Problem Attentio
solving n
Reading and Math Visual
verbal Comprehensio Comprehension
comprehension n

7. British Standards 8878 : 2010

8.  User research
 Organise navigation naming and written
content
 User testing with people who have varied
abilities throughout design and development
 Making sure the programming is correct and
accessible
Testing the website with various accessibility
tools which can be found online

9. Usability testing

11. Thanks for listening!
Any questions?