Cognitive accessibility: an evaluation of knowledge
Together with the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Dyslexia Association in Sweden, Funka’s industrial PhD student Stefan Johansson has participated in a survey on the documented knowledge in the field of cognitive accessibility.
Most of what is known about accessibility has to do with physical disabilities. In the field of cognitive or mental impairments, there is far less documented knowledge.
In an earlier project funded by the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency, the Royal Institute of Technology has surveyed the scientific literature on cognitive accessibility. The survey showed a very limited amount of scientific research.
Now the work has proceeded to the issue of what additional knowledge exists. Together with the Royal Institute of Technology and the Dyslexia Association, Funka charts the so called grey literature in the field. Grey literature refers to research publications that have not been published as peer-reviewed articles and published by a publisher.
The aim of the study was to answer the question about which cognitively oriented activities that are documented in the grey literature and what effects they have. The literature review was conducted during October 2013 to February 2014. The results are presented in a popular scientific report and a scientific report is underway.
There is also a summary report that provides an overview of both the scientific and grey literature.
The scientific papers:
Borg, J., Lantz, A. & Gulliksen, J. (2014) Accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities: a systematic search and review of empirical evidence. In Univ Access Inf Soc Springer.
Lantz, A., Borg, J., Johansson, S., Hildén, A. & Gulliksen, J. (2014). Accessibility to electronic communication for people with cognitive disabilities: a review of grey literature. Unpublished manuscript
Popular scientific papers:
The study has been initiated by user groups.
Funding: The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency
Consortium: Royal Institute of Technology, the Dyslexia Association in Sweden, Funka
Period: 2013-2014