This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.

Gap Analysis of user Barriers

Outline:

  • Introduce where technology & techniques fall short of user requirements
  • Pointer to Gap Analysis TR

See page details in plan

Introduction

The Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force’s aim is to improve web accessibility for people with cognitive and learning disabilities.

This document contains a gap analysis and review of key issues

It is designed for standards groups and policy makers. However, it has useful information for anyone trying to understand the topic. There is also an appendix on how to make content usable for people with leaning and cognitive disabilities. Content developers may find this section the most useful.

This is being done as part of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Accessible Platform Architecture Working Group (APA WG), part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C. Challenges facing this work include:

Addressing these issues requires us to make a broader view of solutions for accessibility, such as a content focused approach and to explore personalization solutions that incorporate inclusive design. To address these issues we have adopted the following strategies:

Assumptions

There is a huge number of cognitive disabilities and variations of them. If we attempt an analysis of all the possibilities, the job will be too big, and nothing will be achieved. Therefore, we are adopting a phased approach, selecting in phase one a limited scope of eight diverse disabilities, and hope to achieve something useful within that scope. Also note that helping users improve skills, and emotional disabilities, are out of scope for phase one. We anticipate this analysis will continue to a second or third phase where more user groups are analyzed, and the existing analyses are updated with new research and with new technologies and scenarios.

Topic 1: Authentication and Safety

About users: People with cognitive and learning disabilities may be not able use a Web site becuse they can not use the login or authenitification process.

Many users (most COGA groups) have memory issues that can make transcribing text or remembering passwords difficult or impossible. Other contributing issues include impaired executive function.

Sometimes security and authentication put a barrier between users and the tasks they are doing. For example, requiring remembering and/or transcribing passwords often bar users with cognitive disabilities from accessing content or using a service.

Many users without cognitive and learning disabilities find these tasks hard. However, when the user also has a disability such as a memory disability, these tasks are not just annoying but impossible, and they are prevented from using these services.

For example, a person with an early stage of dementia may be able to check whether they have made a payment. (This is a task that is more important for people with memory impairment to ensure they do not double pay.) Their banking system requires long password and coping codes from the a phone to their laptop. Because they can not do these tasks they can not check their account. The result is often that people require a caregiver to help them and lose their autonomy years before it would otherwise be necessary.

This leads to the following user stories.

See full details in the TR

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This is an unpublished draft preview that might include content that is not yet approved. The published website is at w3.org/WAI/.