Cognitive criteria for accessibility

This section presents five criteria for cognitive accessibility. The criteria build on well-researched recommendations on cognitive accessibility from more than fifty different sources in research, standardisation and industry practice. Some of the sources include ISO guidelines, ETSI Human Factors technical reports, user research from W3C, user need research in publicly funded research projects.

To be sure that the criteria are both relevant and useable in practice, they have been tested by end users with a variety of cognitive impairments, website owners, IT-suppliers and web accessibility expert.

The criteria as such have been formulated in short statements. The statements capture how the criteria help the end-users, and they also describe the area of focus for the criterion.

Each criterion is supported by a test methodology designed to help everyone working with digital interfaces to understand and make use of the criteria in practice. The test methodology describes which statements that need to be true for the criterion to be correctly applied.

The criteria are independent from each other and can be used separately or together. To see examples of how the criteria can be implemented, please see the section “Prototypes”