Redesigning for Cognitive Ease - Alyssa Panetta (A11yTalks - January 2023)
Channel: Accessibility Talks
Date: 12/01/2023

After all the WCAG standards are met, how accessible is your site for users with cognitive disabilities? How can you tell? What does that mean? Where would you even start?

I'd been making websites for over 20 years, and I didn't understand what it was like to use the web with a cognitive disability until I developed one. After treatment to remove a slow-growing brain tumor, I had a hard time using most websites, including the ones I built! This real-world experience gave me a newfound perspective on accessibility, and I learned that there’s no better way to understand a user’s experience than living it. It also motivated me to learn new techniques that provide more accessible experiences for users with cognitive impairments and redesign parts of my sites with a focus on cognitive ease.