Sensory & cognitive considerations

Sensory considerations

At its core, graphic design is concerned with communication. It is critical that designers consider the diverse sensory abilities and preferences of their audience. The following list of sensory characteristics should be a bare minimum of consideration for all graphic design projects.

Graphic design fundamentals

It’s beyond the scope of this book to cover the fundamentals of graphic design. If these concepts and principles are unfamiliar to you, there are resources listed at the in the Resources section of this site. If you are completely new to this field, Ellen Lupton’s book Graphic Design: The New Basics is a good place to start.

Eyesight

Think about people who are hypersensitive to light.
Consider people who are colour blind, ranging from those who cannot see colour at all to those who cannot discern between certain hues.
Consider people who are partially sighted or low vision, but still rely on their eyesight to see images or read.
Consider people who are blind or low vision to the point that it is impossible for them to read images or text visually.

Hearing

Think about people who are hypersensitive to sound.
Consider people who are hard of hearing, but still rely on residual hearing and lipreading for communication.
Consider people who are D/deaf.
Consider people who are DeafBlind.

Motion

Think about people who are hypersensitive to motion.
Consider people who may be disoriented by non-stop moving images.
Consider people who are neurologically divergent.
Consider people who have difficulty with visual and cognitive processing.

Multi-modality

Design that is limited to a single sensory modality will likely be inaccessible to many people. Successful accessible graphic design reaches across many sensory limitations and communicates through multiple modalities. Semantically structured text is often used as the basis for modal translations, as it can be robustly interpreted by various assistive technologies.

We should celebrate neurodiversity – the world would be poorer and life duller if we were all the same.
Neil Milliken

Cognitive considerations

Consider people with conditions that affect their ability to process, understand and communicate information. There are a multitude of conditions that can affect cognitive function, and they can cause difficulty with any number of the following tasks.

Distinguishing sounds from background noise.
Focusing or staying on task.
Memorizing and recalling information.
Understanding and following directions.
Understanding complex logic.
Understanding abstract ideas.
Understanding language usage.
Communicating in speech or writing.
Working with numbers.
Keeping expected pace in any number of cognitive tasks.

Consider the interaction between multiple conditions and consider how these might also interact with the sensory limitations listed previously.

Cognitive load

There is a finite amount of new information we can process, memorize and recall at any given time. These operations take up capacity in our working memory and the mental effort used to maintain this working memory is called the cognitive load. In order to maximize the accessibility of a design, we need to minimize the cognitive load it demands from the user. Consider the following ways in which cognitive load can be reduced.

Grouping. Group pieces of content in a manner that optimizes utility to the reader and clarifies understanding.

Chunking. Avoid large, overwhelming blocks of information by breaking up content into smaller sections with meaningful groupings or headings.

Hierarchy. Clearly differentiate the relative importance of each piece of content in the design. When possible, maintain a pyramidal hierarchical structure within a page.

Anchors. Do not demand that a user reads the entire piece or must read it all in one sitting. Use headings and other anchors to allow the reader to jump around and easily find their place in the content.

Consistency. Consistency helps decrease distractions and increase predictability in a design while breaking with this consistency will help draw attention to a novel element.

Grid. The visual structure afforded by a well-implemented underlying grid provides additional consistency and predictability for the reader.

Avoid organizing content in any manner that requires the user to cross-reference as this necessitates memorization and recall leading to increased cognitive load.

Never require the user to cross-reference a guide or table and avoid using legends whenever possible.