I recently went looking for resources for neurodiversity & web accessibility. I have an article about event accessibility (which features some neurodiverse-friendly tips), but I wasn’t sure about anything specific to websites. I ended up focusing on autism, rather than all of the neurodiversity umbrella. Here are a few things I found:

• The UK’s National Autistic Society has a page on web design for ASD users
• Jamie Knight did a presentation at CSUN 2015 on Cognitive Accessibility, focusing on what works/doesn’t for him as an autistic person.
• Jamie Knight again with a few steps for ND accessibility
• Designing ‘Autism-friendly’ websites; principles and guidelines (a little dated? and doesn’t exist anymore except in archive)
• For a more techy checklist, WebAIM has a Cognitive Accessibility Checklist

I thought I’d also throw my own two cents in, and share my perspective on some accessibility features that improve my web experience. This turned out to be harder than I expected though — a lot of things online I find rather intuitive, and it’s really more the “real world” that I have trouble with 🙂

Video captions, audio transcripts

I’m not a fan of audio. Well. I like podcasts while doing chores, but that’s not really here nor there. If I’m watching a video of a conference talk, for example, it’s much easier for me to focus on the video if the speaker is captioned. On some days, when I’m not tired for example, this isn’t as much of an issue. On the other hand, today I kept going back and forth watching a 30min talk in 5min increments because I just couldn’t keep track of the speaker.

I also find transcripts easier to skim as opposed to listening to an audio segment — and if I want to listen to audio I need to get off of my computer. That’s probably more of an “everyone” kind of thing, though, it’s just hard to listen to one thing and read another at the same time.

Clear indications for permanent changes, allow going back/undo

This one’s mostly for forms. Often forms are broken into pages. This makes sense, especially for longer forms, but sometimes a question clarifies something I misunderstood in a previous question, or reminds me of a better answer, etc. I have a habit of filling out forms non-linearly, then reading over the entire thing at least 2 more times to make sure I’m all set.

(Why do I do this non-linearly? I write non-linearly too, jotting down words as they come, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to express the same thought I was having if I wait. I feel like that might be atypical for autistic people, but perhaps not — I’ve never asked anyone.)

Typeform, despite having very pretty forms, really startled me the first few times I used it. It looks like you have to answer the questions one at a time, and can’t go back. It turns out that you can scroll up, but it’s not immediately obvious. Since forms can be pretty important, it’s best if they’re as low-stress as possible.

Nothing too jarring or startling

Autoplay audio or video, bright flashing colors, moving animations (especially if they slow down the rest of my tabs) are a surefire way for your site to be auto-closed. I tend to leave my computer muted, just so I don’t jump out of my skin every time I end up on some news story with autoplay video clip.

Emoji, Emoji Reactions, Likes

This one’s silly, but I have trouble phrasing simple comments that mean “I like this”. Having reactions or likes lets me easily indicate to the author, I saw this, I appreciated it, and I want you to know that — without spending 15+min trying to phrase that in way that makes sense.