2. Potential Barriers and User Requirements

Contents: Potential barriers, memory, attention, reading, language and word comprehension, visual comprehension.

Neurodivergent people may encounter barriers in various areas of life, including: 

• Unstructured content;
• complex navigation and page layouts that are difficult to understand and use;
• insufficient time to complete tasks;
• animated, flashing or flickering content;
• background noise that cannot be turned off;
• web browsers and media players that do not offer controls to turn off animations or audio;
• visual page designs that cannot be adjusted using web browser controls or custom style sheets.

Memory

Many people affected may experience difficulties with their memory (working, short-term and/or long-term memory). They often cannot remember how they arrived at the content and may quickly forget information. Therefore, a consistent design and presentation can help to minimise the memory load. Lengthy and complex processes should be kept as short as possible. Progress indicators such as ‘Step 2 of 4’ can be helpful.

Attention

People with neurodivergence may find it difficult to concentrate on a specific task. Some people with ADHD may have difficulties with learning. This is often not due to information processing, but rather to a tendency to be easily distracted. For these reasons, animated, flashing, wobbling, flickering or other content that could be distracting should be avoided to help users focus on important content and functions. A clear and uncluttered design can help with this, for example through the use of colours, white space and simple layouts.

Reading, Speech and Word Comprehension

People with these conditions may need more time to read and process content. Supplementary media such as illustrations, symbols, video and audio can help them to understand the text better. There are specialised technologies that represent words using images. These can help those affected to understand the text more effectively. Visual structure also plays a role in design, for example, indenting sub-points in a hierarchical list and highlighting text by changing the font colour or background colour.

People with dyslexia often perceive words as floating rather than aligned in a line. Furthermore, people with dyslexia may perceive words differently; for example, the letters p, b, d and q may be interpreted as a single letter. There are fonts developed specifically for dyslexia, in which letters are weighted downwards and similar characters appear different. Text-to-speech software can help by reading the text aloud. Screen readers that highlight the word or sentence being read, as well as a visible focus indicator, can also make it easier to follow along.

Visual Comprehension

Processing visual information can cause difficulties for some people. They recognise that an object is present on a web page or in a document, but are unable to identify it. Instead of a static image, a video with commentary and multimedia elements may be more helpful. Users can identify and process a moving, speaking person in a video more easily than a static photograph of a person. Information should be provided in various formats and not conveyed exclusively through visual communication methods (colour, typography, design elements, images, etc.).