How to Design Accessible Services for Neurodiversity

Why is Accessibility for Neurodiverse People important?

Designing accessible services means making sure they are intuitive and work for everybody, including but not limited to people with cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities (LD), neurodiversity, intellectual disabilities, and specific learning disabilities.

Cognitive impairments can be permanent, temporary, situational or a combination. They can also be temporary for people who are generally considered to be neurotypical – as an example, fatigue, stress, or bereavement can happen to anyone at any time. Accessibility is really for everybody.

What are web accessibility standards?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an internationally recognised standard for accessibility, and have 3 levels – A, AA and AAA. By law, public sector websites and mobile apps need to meet the WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard.  

But this means that often a lot of the AAA WCAG criteria isn’t considered, which are the ones that help people with cognitive impairments such as dyslexia, ADHD, autism, or brain injuries.  

Currently in the UK, it’s estimated that 10% of the population are dyslexic, one in 100 people are autistic, and 900,000 have dementia – making it important to go beyond the basic requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG to increase accessibility for people with cognitive and learning disabilities.

Identifying Design Criteria Which Help Neurodiverse People

Some of the AAA criteria which help neurodivergent people include:  

• Low or No Background Audio: helps people who have auditory processing or focus issues. 
• Interruptions: helps people who get distracted easily. 
• Three Flashes: helps people who have photosensitive seizures. 
• Animation from Interactions: helps people who have vestibular disorders leading to headaches and nausea. 
• Location: helps people with a short attention span or memory issues. 
• Unusual Words, Abbreviations, Reading Level and Pronunciation: help people who may struggle to read or understand written text. 

The obvious conclusion to making sure services don’t exclude the neurodivergent would be trying to meet AAA across the board. However even WC3 don’t recommend that, as it’s not possible to satisfy all level AAA criteria for some content. And it can also create more issues beyond accessibility – for example changing colours to meet AAA for colour contrast goes against the GOV.UK brand colour palette used on almost all departments’ digital services. And if it doesn’t look and feel like a government service, people aren’t going to trust it and they won’t use it. 

How to Make Content Usable for Neurodiverse People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities

One thing that designers can do to make services accessible for the neurodiverse or neurovariant, is to consider the Cognitive Accessibility Guidance (COGA) in conjunction with WCAG. 

COGA helps to bridge the gaps in WCAG by being very specific about what needs to be considered. The 8 COGA objectives have example user stories and design patterns to make sure people with common cognitive impairments are not excluded. 

1. Help users understand what things are and how to use them
2. Help users to find what they need
3. Use clear and understandable content
4. Help users avoid mistakes and know how to correct them
5. Help users focus
6. Ensure processes do not rely on memory
7. Provide help and support
8. Support adaptation and personalisation

To build truly inclusive services, content providers and designers should not stop at AA compliance, but rather look at the AAA criteria and see what they can do to make things better for even more people. And then cross reference COGA to see what design patterns and user stories can be implemented to meet a wide range of additional needs.