Cognitive Issues and Web Access

Remember that some visitors to your site will have learning differences. They may have a different learning style and/or an actual learning disability.

Issues:

People who will visit your website may process information in vastly different ways.

Every student, whether they have a disability or not, has a preferred and secondary learning style: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. Therefore, the more senses you can include in your presentation, the greater the chance of meeting the learning style need of the visitor.

Realize that the students with learning disabilities comprise the largest population of students with disabilities served by College of the Redwoods (and California Community Colleges in general).

A "Simulation":

Imagine you have a cognitive disability. Switch your left and right hands and then try touch typing. Or try navigating some Web pages using the mouse in your opposite hand. Although this is not a very accurate simulation of a cognitive disability, how did it make you feel?

Some Solutions:

• Keep people with cognitive differences in mind when creating new Web pages.
• It may sound obvious, but the best solution for meeting the needs of people with learning differences is to write well-organized Web pages using straightforward, clear and concise language.
• Make use of graphics and images which increase comprehension. Universally recognized symbols such as arrows can be helpful for all visitors to your site.
• Plan to include accessible multimedia (such as illustrations, video, and/or audio along with transcripts) to meet the needs of different learning styles. Don't forget to use alt text for all images/illustrations and caption any online video.

Fact: Text only Web pages are not necessarily accessible. Although text is great for people who are blind, text only pages can be quite inaccessible for people with reading problems and/or learning disabilities.

• Separate content from HTML markup through the use of cascading style sheets (CSS).
• Provide links to any needed plug-ins or required software. For example, if you provide a PDF document, you need to include a link to the Adobe Reader Software and also provide an accessible equivalent (such as HTML) to the PDF document.
• When in doubt, keep it simple.