Cognitive and learning

Level A, 16 rules

• 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded)

  Blind and low-vision viewers hear the soundtrack and miss the on-screen text, the actions and the context a sighted viewer picks up without noticing. People with cognitive disabilities who find it hard to work out what is happening on screen benefit from hearing the same thing named aloud.

• 1.4.2 Audio Control

  Screen reader users are hit hardest, because the sound competes with the speech they navigate by. Users who are both blind and hard of hearing have no way out at all when the screen reader shares the system volume. People with attention or auditory processing difficulties lose their place the moment unexpected sound starts.

• 2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts

  This affects speech-input users, whose dictation is a stream of the same characters a shortcut listens for, keyboard users with a tremor who brush a key and lose their place in a long page, and people with some cognitive disabilities, who benefit from remapping so the same shortcut does the same thing across every application they use.

• 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable

  This affects screen-reader users hearing a form one field at a time, slow typists, people with cognitive or motor disabilities, deaf users for whom the page text is a second language or who are working through a sign language interpreter, and anyone for whom a form takes longer than it did in the demo.

• 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide

  This affects people with ADHD and other cognitive disabilities, people with vestibular disorders who get dizzy or nauseous from on-screen motion, screen-magnifier users trying to track a target that keeps moving, screen-reader users whose linear read is interrupted by content changing underneath them, and anyone who reads stationary text slowly.

• 2.4.2 Page Titled

  This affects screen-reader users orienting themselves on arrival, people with visual disabilities telling several open pages apart, people with cognitive disabilities, limited short-term memory or reading disabilities, people with severe mobility impairments who work by audio while moving between pages, and everyone scanning a page of search results.

• 2.4.3 Focus Order

  This affects keyboard and screen-reader users moving through the page in sequence, magnification users at high zoom who can read a field in the wrong context entirely, and people with reading or cognitive disabilities who lose their place when focus lands somewhere unexpected.

• 2.5.1 Pointer Gestures

  This affects people with limited dexterity or tremors, people using a head pointer, eye-gaze system, prosthetic or speech-controlled mouse emulator, people working one-handed, screen-reader users on touchscreens whose own software eats the gesture before the page sees it, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities who can fall back on a plain tap where a custom gesture makes no sense to them.

• 2.5.2 Pointer Cancellation

  This affects people with tremors or imprecise touch who brush a control by accident, people with visual disabilities who cannot confirm what they touched, people with cognitive limitations who need a way to back out of an action, people with motor impairments, and anyone who has ever fat-fingered a Delete they did not mean.

• 2.5.3 Label in Name

  This affects voice-control users, whose spoken commands target the labels they can see, screen-reader users who hear one thing while a sighted colleague reads another, people using text-to-speech alongside the visible page, and people with cognitive difficulties who use speech and would otherwise memorise a second name for every control.

• 3.2.1 On Focus

  Keyboard and screen reader users pass through every control on the way to any control, so a page that acts on focus touches almost everything they try to do. People with motor impairments are hit twice, since a tremor or a switch makes an unintended focus more likely in the first place. Users with cognitive disabilities lose their place when a page moves on its own instead of waiting to be asked.

• 3.2.2 On Input

  Screen reader users learn about a context change only once it has happened, because nothing warned them. People with low vision may not see a new window appear at all. People with reading or intellectual disabilities, and anyone who finds visual cues hard to read, need the change said in words rather than shown. Users with cognitive disabilities lose their thread when the page acts without being asked.

• 3.2.6 Consistent Help

  Users with cognitive disabilities need help where it was last time, because relearning its position on every page is a barrier of its own. A person who can describe their problem in their own words often gets further with a chat than with a phone number, which is why the rule names those as two separate kinds of help rather than one. And anybody under stress, in the middle of a billing problem or a failed checkout, needs the entry point exactly where they last saw it.

• 3.3.1 Error Identification

  Screen reader users learn only that something failed, with no way to tell which field caused it. Colorblind users may not read a red border as different from any other border. People with cognitive, language and learning disabilities need the reason spelled out, because the shape of a form does not always make it obvious. Everybody else just loses the time.

• 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions

  Users with cognitive disabilities lose the instruction the instant its placeholder disappears, and they are the people least able to rebuild it from memory. Screen reader users meet a field that was never labeled at all. People with low vision struggle with placeholder text in particular, since browsers usually render it at a contrast that would fail the contrast rule if it were ordinary text. And everybody guesses at date formats nobody stated.

• 3.3.7 Redundant Entry

  People with motor disabilities, including anybody using switch control or voice input, pay for every keystroke twice. People with memory and cognitive disabilities have to rebuild an answer they already gave, sometimes with no way to check what it was. And anybody deep in a long process is more tired at step five than at step one, which is exactly when the form asks them to do it all again.

Level AA, 14 rules

• 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded)

  Blind and low-vision viewers depend on the soundtrack to carry everything the video communicates, because nothing on screen reaches them any other way. Viewers with cognitive disabilities who find it hard to interpret what is happening on screen get the same benefit from hearing it named.

• 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose

  People with cognitive disabilities who cannot work out a field's purpose from the label alone are the group this rule was written for. People with cerebral palsy, stroke, head injury, motor neuron disease or a learning disability who use software that puts pictures on form fields depend on the same declaration. So do people with motor disabilities for whom typing is slow and effortful, people with memory difficulties, and anyone mistyping an address on a phone keyboard.

• 1.4.5 Images of Text

  Low-vision users who zoom in or apply a custom stylesheet lose the words first. Dyslexic readers who swap in a different font lose them too. People with visual tracking difficulties who change line spacing and alignment cannot change either one inside an image. Users of browser translation tools get a page in their language with a picture still in yours.

• 1.4.12 Text Spacing

  Low-vision readers who need bigger gaps between lines, words and letters to read at all. Dyslexic readers who widen spacing to read faster. Anyone using a reading-aid extension, a bookmarklet or a custom stylesheet, which is how these changes usually get made, because no mainstream browser offers all four settings for an ordinary page.

• 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus

  Screen magnifier users need to pan across the screen to read revealed content, and panning means moving the pointer. Users with tremor or low pointer accuracy trigger content they did not mean to and need a way to clear it. People who run a large mouse cursor find it covering the very thing that just appeared. Users with cognitive disabilities need the reading time a timer takes away.

• 2.4.5 Multiple Ways

  This affects people with cognitive disabilities who find deep hierarchies hard to hold in mind, screen-reader users for whom search beats a menu tree, magnification users reading a large navigation bar a slice at a time, and people who would rather move through a site in sequence, page after page.

• 2.4.6 Headings and Labels

  This affects screen-reader users skimming by heading list, people with limited short-term memory or reading disabilities who rely on predicting what a section holds, people with cognitive disabilities orienting by signposts, and every reader who scans a page before committing to it.

• 2.4.7 Focus Visible

  This affects every sighted keyboard user, who otherwise guesses where the next Enter press will land, and it affects people with attention limitations, short-term memory limitations or executive processing difficulties, who need to see where focus is rather than remember it.

• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum)

  This affects sighted keyboard users who lose track of focus behind a sticky bar, low-vision users who orient with a pointer and see less of the page at a time under magnification, and people with attention limitations, short-term memory limitations or executive processing difficulties, who lose their place entirely when focus goes out of sight.

• 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation

  Screen reader users move through a page in sequence, so a link that has moved is a link they now have to hunt for. People with low vision using magnification see a small window of the screen at a time and rely on the layout holding still. Users with cognitive and intellectual disabilities depend on the routine staying put. And sighted users with no disability at all navigate by spatial memory too, which is why this one turns up in usability testing as well as in audits.

• 3.2.4 Consistent Identification

  Users with cognitive disabilities need a function they have already learned to look the same next time. Screen reader users rely on that same familiarity, and they lose the ability to find a control by searching for its name when the name keeps moving. People who find text hard to read get the most out of consistent icons, because a familiar icon lets them skip the words entirely, and that only holds while the icon means one thing.

• 3.3.3 Error Suggestion

  People with cognitive and learning disabilities are hit hardest, because knowing something is wrong is not the same as knowing what to do. Blind and low-vision users need the fix described rather than shown, since the field will not look wrong to them. People with motor impairments pay for every extra attempt in effort. Everybody else is stuck in the same loop with less at stake.

• 3.3.4 Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data)

  People with motor disabilities make more accidental inputs, through no fault of their own, and a page with no safeguard turns each one into a consequence. People with reading disabilities transpose digits, which is how a quantity of 100 becomes 1000 and a travel date lands in the wrong month. Users with cognitive disabilities are likelier to commit to something before they have finished reading it. And everybody else has been saved by a review screen at least once.

• 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum)

  People with memory or processing difficulties are the audience this rule was written for. Dyslexic users transcribe a code and land a character in the wrong place. Users with dyscalculia have the same trouble with a string of digits, which is precisely what a one-time code is. And anybody whose password manager your form fights is affected too, disability or not.

Level AAA, 20 rules

No law names AAA as a blanket duty, but these are where the remaining barriers for people for whom the difficulty is understanding, remembering, or staying with it usually sit.

• 1.2.7 Extended Audio Description (Prerecorded)

  Blind viewers and people with low vision who cannot see the screen feel this first, and W3C names a third group beside them. People with cognitive disabilities who find it hard to work out what is happening visually.

• 1.3.6 Identify Purpose

  People with cognitive and learning disabilities benefit most, and W3C names four kinds of need in particular. Memory, focus and attention, language, and executive function.

• 1.4.8 Visual Presentation

  People with dyslexia, low vision and other reading difficulties benefit most, and W3C attributes the justification problem specifically to certain cognitive disabilities.

• 1.4.9 Images of Text (No Exception)

  People with low vision, people with visual tracking difficulties, and people with cognitive disabilities that affect reading are the three groups W3C names.

• 2.2.3 No Timing

  W3C names blind readers first, then people with low vision, then people with cognitive limitations and people with motor impairments, and adds deaf readers for whom written text is a second language.

• 2.2.4 Interruptions

  People with attention differences feel this most, along with screen reader users and people with low vision whose reading gets cut across by an update they never asked for.

• 2.2.5 Re-authenticating

  Anybody who works through a form more slowly. W3C names people with cognitive limitations who read slowly, screen reader users working through a complicated form, and people using alternative input devices.

• 2.2.6 Timeouts

  People with cognitive disabilities who need to plan a task and take breaks, and older readers, are the two groups W3C describes.

• 2.4.8 Location

  People with cognitive disabilities are the group W3C names, along with anybody who followed a link straight into a deep page and now needs to work out where they are.

• 2.4.9 Link Purpose (Link Only)

  People with motion impairments, people with cognitive limitations, and screen reader users pulling up a list of a page's links are the three groups W3C names.

• 2.4.10 Section Headings

  Blind readers, keyboard users, people with learning disabilities and anybody skimming rather than reading straight through all use the same structure.

• 2.4.12 Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced)

  Sighted keyboard users are the main group, and that includes people using speech input, sip-and-puff switches, on-screen keyboards and scanning software. People with low vision using magnification, and people with attention or short-term memory limitations, are the other two W3C names.

• 3.1.3 Unusual Words

  People with cognitive and learning disabilities who find words hard to decode or to understand. W3C names a third group that surprises people, readers using a screen magnifier, who lose the surrounding context that would otherwise settle the meaning.

• 3.1.4 Abbreviations

  People who find words hard to decode, people with limited memory, people who struggle to use context, and readers using a screen magnifier, who lose the surrounding text that would otherwise explain the term.

• 3.1.5 Reading Level

  People with cognitive and learning disabilities, people with low literacy, and readers working in a second language. W3C also notes that reading disabilities turn up among expert readers, so the audience is not who you would guess.

• 3.1.6 Pronunciation

  Blind readers, readers with low vision, and readers with reading disabilities are the three groups W3C names, along with anybody whose technology reads the words out loud.

• 3.2.5 Change on Request

  Screen reader users, people with low vision, people with motor impairments and people with cognitive limitations are the four groups W3C names.

• 3.3.5 Help

  People with writing disabilities, people with reading and intellectual disabilities, and older readers, whom W3C names alongside them for the same difficulty with text input.

• 3.3.6 Error Prevention (All)

  People with cognitive disabilities, people with motor disabilities who are more likely to mistype or mis-click, and honestly anybody who has ever pressed submit by mistake. W3C names transposing numbers and hitting keys by accident specifically.

• 3.3.9 Accessible Authentication (Enhanced)

  People with cognitive and learning disabilities and people with memory impairments are who this exists for. W3C's cognitive accessibility work makes the point bluntly, that a login nobody can get through is the difference between using a service and not using it at all.

Other groups

• Blind and screen reader users40 rules
• Low vision35 rules
• Deaf and hard of hearing9 rules
• Motor and keyboard-only33 rules
• Voice control13 rules
• Seizures and vestibular disorders4 rules