Your task is to navigate to the Glaucoma page of the website using a screenreader such as the Apple VoiceOver and your keyboard. After you have read that article, there will be a take quiz at the end of the page. You need to remember 3 keyboard buttons: Tab to go to the next item on the screen (keep in mind that once you are at the end of the screen if you click tab it will take you to the top of the screen again), enter to click on a link or button, and shift+tab to go back to the previous item on the webpage.
Cognitive Disabilities
Cognitive disability (also known as intellectual disability) is a nebulous term describing a person who has greater difficulty with mental tasks than the average person. Cognitive disabilities are by far the most common type of disability.
Most cognitive disabilities are rooted in biology or physiology. The connection between biology and mental processes is most obvious in cases of traumatic brain injury and genetic disorders, but even the more subtle cognitive disabilities stem from brain structure or chemistry. People with profound cognitive disabilities need assistance with nearly every aspect of daily living. Someone with a minor learning disability, however, may be able to function adequately, even to the extent that the disability is never diagnosed.
Some web content is too complex by its nature to ever be fully accessible to users with profound cognitive disabilities. Nevertheless, developers and designers still have techniques available to make content accessible to as wide a spectrum of users as possible.
Clinical vs. Functional Classifications
Cognitive disabilities can be thought of in functional or clinical terms. Clinical diagnoses include autism, Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and dementia. Less severe cognitive conditions include attention deficit disorder (ADD), dyslexia (difficulty reading), dyscalculia (difficulty with math), and learning disabilities in general. Clinical diagnoses may be useful from a medical perspective for treatment, but for the purposes of web accessibility, classifying by functional disability is more useful.
Functional classification focuses on the user's abilities and challenges, irrespective of their medical or behavioral causes. Multiple functional disabilities can stem from one clinical diagnosis: A person with memory deficits may also have difficulty with attention or problem-solving. Functional categories of cognitive disabilities include difficulties with:
Memory
Problem-solving
Attention
Reading, linguistic, and verbal comprehension
Math comprehension
Visual comprehension
Functional classifications are useful in web accessibility because they align to concern s of web designers and developers. Telling a developer that some people have autism is only meaningful if the developer knows what kinds of barriers a person with autism might face with web content. On the other hand, telling a developer that some people have difficulties comprehending math gives the developer a meaningful context. Developers simply need to understand and consider the user's range of abilities.
“CognitiveIntroduction.” WebAIM, webaim.org/articles/cognitive/#:~:text=Cognitive disability (also known as,tasks than the average person.&text=Someone with a minor learning,the disability is never diagnosed.
