Cognitive Web Accessibility: Research 2009

Human-computer interface design in an e-Learning system for individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities
Automatic readability assessment for people with intellectual disabilities
"My research goal is to advance our understanding of, and quantify, what makes a text easy or difficult to read, in particular for readers with intellectual disabilities."
Comparing evaluation techniques for text readability software for adults with intellectual disabilities
"We introduce our research on the development of software to automatically simplify news articles, display them, and read them aloud for adults with ID."
Evaluating the usability of a single UK community acquired brain injury (ABI) rehabilitation service website: Implications for research methodology and website design
"This pilot study recruited a group of individuals with ABI ... who were clients of a UK National Health Service rehabilitation service and asked them to assess a specialised website provided by that service and hosted by their employing Primary Care Trust organisation. Participants completed a practical task and then gave their opinions on various aspects of website design, and content. They were also asked to suggest improvements and recommend additions. Overall the results were favourable. However, improvements in the legibility, layout and writing style were identified."
Five Steps to an Accessible Classroom Website
"Websites should be accessible to those with visual, hearing, movement, cognitive, and speech disabilities." ... "This article presents five steps that will open one's website to a wide community of diverse users: (1) Organize for easier navigation; (2) Navigation without a mouse; (3) Text explanations for images; (4) Using text that makes sense; and (5) Web validators."
What we know about dyslexia and Web accessibility: a research review
"This paper reviews existing literature at the intersection of dyslexia and accessibility research to determine what useful knowledge exists regarding this important and relatively large group of users. This review uncovers that, although there are few published usability tests with dyslexic users, there is a considerable body of knowledge on dyslexia as well as many design guidelines for authoring dyslexic-accessible interfaces."
The performance of mouse pointing and selecting for pupils with and without intellectual disabilities
"Pupils with intellectual disabilities executed tasks more correctly in bigger target even in tasks with the same index of difficulty. The group with intellectual disabilities performed worse in cursor control even when only those correctly completed tasks were used for comparison. However, a similar pattern was observed in the performance of the group without disabilities."
Comparing evaluation techniques for text readability software for adults with intellectual disabilities
"We introduce our research on the development of software to automatically simplify news articles, display them, and read them aloud for adults with ID." ... "We have found that some forms of questions work well at measuring the difficulty level of a text: multiple-choice questions with three answer choices, each illustrated with clip-art or a photo. Some types of questions do a poor job: yes/no questions and Likert-scale ...".
Automatic readability assessment for people with intellectual disabilities
"My research goal is to advance our understanding of, and quantify, what makes a text easy or difficult to read, in particular for readers with intellectual disabilities."
Communication and empowerment: A place for rich and multiple media?
"Project @pple (Access & Participation for People with intellectual disability in Learning Environments) was about exploring the terms on which young people with intellectual disability access and participate with e-Learning and the Web. "
Competence of people with intellectual disabilities on using human-computer interface
"We investigated the task processes which hinder people with intellectual disabilities (ID) when using the human-computer interface." ... "The interface used by Internet Explorer (IE) was standardized into 16 tasks ...".
AltText: A Showcase of User Centred Design in the Netherlands
"In the information processing chain many documents are produced that are inaccessible to the reading impaired. The altText project aims to increase the accessibility of this content ...".
Enhancing Accessibility of Web Content for the Print-Impaired and Blind People
"In this paper we present SpellCast Navi, ..." which "... acquires and parses the content of web pages, converts bi-lingual text into synthetic speech using high quality speech synthesizer, and supports a set of common functionalities such as navigation through hotkeys, audible navigation lists and more."
Adaptive User Interfaces: Benefit or Impediment for Lower-Literacy Users?
"This paper addresses web accessibility and usability for lower-literacy users with limited ICT skills. Although adaptive and adaptable user interfaces have been studied and discussed at least since the 80s, the potential of adaptive user interfaces is still far from realization. A main conclusion drawn in this paper is that simple, straightforward and intuitive adaptivity mechanisms may work well, but more complex and pervasive ones don’t, and may even be counterproductive."
Meta-design: Expanding Boundaries and Redistributing Control in Design
"This paper characterizes different design methodologies and identifies the unique challenges and opportunities for meta-design. It illustrates this approach with two examples ..." one of which is "...the Memory Aiding Prompting System (MAPS) (addressing the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers) ..."
Implications of Graphics on Usability and Accessibility for the Voter
"After an overview of the history of graphics on ballots, usability and accessibility issues concerning graphics are discussed in detail. The question of whether certain types of graphics would help people with cognitive disabilities vote is then considered in light of research and best practices for usability and accessibility."
Mobile Technology for People with Cognitive Disabilities and Their Caregivers – HCI Issues
"Participants mapped future directions for exploiting technical opportunities, with a focus on people with cognitive disabilities. HCI issues that emerged as critical include profile-based configuration of user interfaces and functionality, support for spoken presentation of text content, support for viewing web content on devices with small screens, and support for remote assistance, so that users can get help when they get stuck."
Cognitive impairments and Web 2.0
"This paper illustrates how some of the human–computer interaction patterns associated with Web 2.0 can degrade the user experience of those with particular cognitive disabilities."
Public computing options for individuals with cognitive impairments: Survey outcomes
"Purpose: To examine availability and accessibility of public computing for individuals with cognitive impairment (CI) who reside in the USA."
Speaking through pictures: images vs. icons
"We present results from two studies that ..." "... demonstrate that images can be as effective as icons when used as a replacement for English language communication."
End-user moderation of cognitive accessibility in online communities: case study of brain fog in the lyme community
Explores how individuals (with Lyme disease who are affected by 'brain fog' ) "... fail and succeed to establish and enforce, through moderation, the creation of cognitively accessible content ...".
WebAIM: Overview of Steppingstones Cognitive Research
"This article provides a brief overview of the findings and observations of a cognitive accessibility survey."