Cognitive and Neurodiverse Accessibility

The Invisible Disability Challenge

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you learned to create accessible content at scale — AI-generated alt text, captions, transcripts, and structured documents. That lesson focused primarily on perceivable accessibility (ensuring content reaches users in formats they can process). Now you’ll address the most overlooked dimension: cognitive accessibility — designing for how people think, not just how they see and hear.

Cognitive disabilities are the largest and most diverse disability category, yet they receive the least attention in accessibility work. ADHD affects 5-7% of children and 2.5% of adults. Dyslexia affects 5-15% of the population. Autism affects 1-2%. And cognitive differences don’t exist in isolation — many people have overlapping conditions, and everyone experiences reduced cognitive capacity when stressed, tired, or distracted.

Designing for Executive Function

Executive function — the ability to plan, organize, sustain attention, and manage tasks — is the most common cognitive challenge across ADHD, autism, traumatic brain injury, and age-related decline.

Help me audit this digital experience for executive function
accessibility.

The experience: [describe the workflow — signup, checkout,
onboarding, form completion, etc.]

Check for:
1. TASK CLARITY — Is it immediately obvious what the user
   needs to do at each step?
2. PROGRESS VISIBILITY — Can the user see where they are
   and what's remaining?
3. PERSISTENCE — Is progress saved if the user leaves
   and returns?
4. COGNITIVE LOAD — How many decisions per step?
   (target: 1-3, max 5)
5. TIME PRESSURE — Are there time limits? If so, are they
   generous with warnings?
6. ERROR RECOVERY — Can the user undo mistakes easily?
7. DISTRACTION MINIMIZATION — Is non-essential content
   hidden or de-emphasized during the task?

For each finding, rate severity and suggest a specific fix.

Executive Function Design Patterns

✅ Quick Check: Why should cognitive load per step in a multi-step process be limited to 1-3 decisions? Because each decision depletes cognitive resources. For neurotypical users, this causes fatigue over long processes. For users with ADHD or cognitive disabilities, high decision density causes overwhelm that leads to abandonment. Reducing decisions per step also reduces errors for all users — a win for business metrics as well as accessibility.

Designing for Dyslexia

Dyslexia affects reading, not intelligence. The design implications are specific and well-researched:

Help me make this content dyslexia-friendly.

Current content: [paste text]

Apply these evidence-based dyslexia accessibility principles:

TYPOGRAPHY:
- Sans-serif fonts (Arial, Verdana, Open Sans — not decorative fonts)
- Minimum 16px font size (18px preferred)
- Line height 1.5x or greater
- Left-aligned text (not justified — uneven spacing increases difficulty)
- Short line length (50-75 characters)

CONTENT STRUCTURE:
- Short paragraphs (3-4 sentences max)
- Meaningful headings that describe content (not clever/abstract headings)
- Bullet points for grouped information
- Bold for emphasis (not italics — harder to read with dyslexia)

LANGUAGE:
- Simple sentence structure (subject-verb-object)
- Define jargon on first use
- Avoid double negatives
- Use concrete language over abstract

Also check for:
- Text over background images (avoid — creates reading difficulty)
- ALL CAPS text (harder to read — word shapes are lost)
- Long blocks of text without visual breaks

Designing for Autism Spectrum

Autistic users may experience the web differently — with heightened sensitivity to sensory stimulation, preference for predictability, and literal interpretation of language.

Audit this user interface for autism-friendly design.

The interface: [describe or paste screenshots]

Check for:
1. SENSORY — Are there auto-playing videos, animations,
   or sounds that could be overwhelming? Can they be
   paused/muted/disabled?
2. PREDICTABILITY — Is navigation consistent across pages?
   Are interactive elements clearly labeled? Do things
   behave as expected?
3. CLARITY — Are instructions literal and unambiguous?
   (Avoid idioms, metaphors, and implied meaning)
4. OVERWHELM — Is the visual layout clean with clear
   hierarchy? Are there too many options competing
   for attention?
5. TRANSITIONS — Are state changes smooth and explained?
   (Loading states, error states, success states)
6. CONTROL — Can the user control their environment?
   (Reduce motion, mute sounds, choose layout density)

Sensory Considerations

AI for Cognitive Simplification

One of AI’s most powerful cognitive accessibility applications is content simplification without loss of meaning:

I need to make this content available at multiple
cognitive accessibility levels.

Original content: [paste]

Create three versions:
1. STANDARD (8th grade reading level):
   - Clear structure, short paragraphs, common vocabulary
   - All information preserved

2. EASY READ (5th grade level):
   - Short sentences (under 15 words)
   - One idea per sentence
   - Common words only (define any necessary technical terms)
   - Bullet points for key facts

3. SUMMARY (key points only):
   - 3-5 bullet points capturing essential information
   - Under 100 words total
   - Could stand alone without the full content

For each version, show the Flesch-Kincaid reading level score.

✅ Quick Check: Why is autism-friendly design focused on predictability and literal language? Because many autistic users process information literally and find unexpected changes distressing. When a button says “Submit,” they expect it to submit — not open a confirmation dialog, redirect to a new page, AND send an email. Clear, literal labels, consistent navigation, and explained state changes reduce the cognitive effort of interpreting ambiguous interface behavior.

Key Takeaways

• Cognitive accessibility is the most overlooked dimension of inclusive design, yet cognitive disabilities (ADHD, dyslexia, autism) affect 10-20% of the population
• Executive function support (progress indicators, auto-save, task decomposition, undo) benefits cognitively diverse users and improves conversion rates for all users
• Dyslexia-friendly design is specific and evidence-based: sans-serif fonts, left-aligned, short paragraphs, bold for emphasis, no justified text
• Autism-friendly design centers predictability, literal language, sensory control, and consistent navigation patterns
• AI enables multi-level content accessibility — creating standard, simplified, and summary versions of content so users can choose the cognitive load level that works for them

Up Next: You’ll apply inclusive design principles to real-world scenarios — designing onboarding flows, error states, and complex interactions that work for users with diverse abilities and cognitive profiles.