When it comes to accessibility, it’s essential to address the needs of individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), particularly with how they process information and focus on tasks on websites and mobile applications. With thoughtful design, websites and apps can automatically include millions of neurodiverse users who have cognitive differences and want to engage with your content.
Keep reading to explore ADHD-based accessibility, including its impact on digital accessibility, dive into design matters, offer practical ADHD-friendly design tips, and explain how Accessibly’s solutions can help create more inclusive platforms for this special group.
What is ADHD?
One of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects one’s ability to pay attention, control impulses, and memorize. Although it’s often diagnosed in children, adults can also be affected. Roughly 15% of the world has a partial or total disability, including ADHD.
Primary symptoms of ADHD show a persistent pattern of learning difficulties, a lack of hyper focus, difficulty organizing tasks, lack of time management, impulsivity, and restlessness. Those with ADHD often have difficulty maintaining focus and become easily distracted, especially with extensive navigational menus and unclear instructions, easily affecting their self-esteem.
For example, those with ADHD are more susceptible to clicking links before reading instructions, with or without speech recognition software. In addition, they’re more prone to rapid task switching, which keeps them off focus and off tasks (especially with to-do lists and note-taking), potentially affecting your website’s bottom line. ADHD is a condition affecting working memory, which means that remembering instructions (especially from field requirements) can be a challenge.
Sometimes, individuals with ADHD can have difficulty navigating website menus, digesting long-form articles, and working with interactive elements.
Lastly, keep in mind that ADHD affects everyone differently. Some ADHD users are capable of hyper-focusing, while others are easily distracted. By understanding the different dynamics between individuals with ADHD, it’s clear why flexible user-centered design, complete with well-organized content and distraction-free web pages, is so important.
Why Digital Accessibility for ADHD Matters
Visitors to websites that are not focused on ADHD-based accessibility and WCAG success criteria often face frequent challenges, such as overwhelming layouts, lengthy and unstructured text, distracting animations, poor navigation, and a lack of task clarity.
Today, there are numerous websites with crowded interfaces featuring excessive pop-ups, walls of text without headings, constant animations, poorly labeled buttons, and other elements that can distract individuals with ADHD from performing tasks on your website, such as completing a product checkout process.
As a result, all of your key performance indicators, such as average session time, time on page, revenue, and other metrics, will be affected.
Additionally, digital accessibility for individuals with ADHD also ties into the concept of inclusivity. By designing websites that cater to the needs of individuals with ADHD, businesses prioritize equity, acknowledging that everyone has unique cognitive abilities.
Not only does it promote your ethical standards, but it also expands your reach, allowing those with attention-related challenges to interact with your website fully, ultimately increasing overall engagement and driving sales of products and services.
Best Practices for ADHD-Baseed Accessibility
Here are some helpful guidelines for reducing sensory overload and creating ADHD-friendly digital content, as well as tools and technologies to support improved digestibility online, in the classroom, or other settings/environment.
Keep Interfaces Clean
One of the best ways to focus on ADHD-based accessibility is to avoid cluttered pages and only keep on-screen elements that are necessary. Ensure that navigation menus and buttons are consistently placed and aligned. One helpful tip is to group related items together visually, making it easier for individuals with ADHD to discern and reducing cognitive effort by allowing them to find what they need more quickly.
Break Information Into Chunks
Another best practice for ADHD-based accessibility is to break information into manageable chunks. For example, 80% of people with ADHD struggle with long paragraphs, a lack of bullet lists, too many bright colors, and unclear headings and subheadings. Ensure you use short paragraphs, bullet lists, and helpful visuals that reinforce meaning, such as icons and images.
For example, you may opt for smaller, labeled sections as opposed to long-form sections, which makes scanning easier for users with ADHD.
Provide Step-by-Step Instructions
One of the best ways to keep ADHD users engaged is to let them know what’s coming next.
At the start of a process, try to show the entire path upfront. For example, it’s helpful to indicate that a process will take roughly 3 minutes (e.g., ordering a product). Make good use of labeled steps on progress bars and break long forms into single-purpose screens, as they’re easier to complete.
Also, make good use of save and resume, along with auto-save, and provide clear and actionable next and previous controls, so that users do not get lost. It’s also helpful to include estimated time remaining in progress feedback, especially if it’s a multi-step task, such as completing the checkout process.
Additionally, you should focus on making error recovery very easy to understand. Always call out a problem if input fails (e.g., entering a 10-digit phone number), along with affirmative confirmation when the step is completed.
Keep Visual Cues On Point
We highly encourage web developers to focus on primary action buttons, ensuring they always use the same style. Plus, they should always be in the same location across different pages. Try to avoid using too many font color schemes and establish a clear hierarchy for your headings and subheadings. Icons should be strategically used as quick visual anchors for actions, as long as labels are added to them.
By doing so, ADHD users won’t have to search and potentially get lost on the page every time they visit. By allowing them to anticipate where to find essential elements, they will guess less and stay on task more easily.
Minimize Motion
Another best practice for ADHD-based accessibility is to minimize animations and auto-playing videos. They can be highly distracting and prevent users from completing tasks, such as adding an item to a shopping cart or navigating menus. It only increases cognitive overload, so unnecessary interruptions should be avoided.
Use Consistent Language
Another often overlooked aspect of ADHD accessibility is the use of excessive jargon and complex sentences on web pages. For people with ADHD, we highly recommend breaking instructions into simple, easy-to-understand steps. For example, buttons labeled ‘Send’ on one page should not be labeled ‘Submit’ or ‘Confirm’ on a second page, especially if they’re related. By focusing on clear and consistent language, you’ll help support faster task completion for individuals with memory impairments and other cognitive differences who may or may not use assistive technologies.
Keeping interfaces clean, breaking information into manageable chunks, providing step-by-step instructions, focusing on visual cues, minimizing motion, and using consistent language are all best practices to follow to improve accessibility for individuals with ADHD.
Provide Customization Options
Lastly, ADHD-based accessibility can be greatly improved if you allow users to customize a website interface based on personal preferences. They should be able to do everything from adjusting font size to adjusting background colors to help reduce cognitive overload and make it easier to navigate a website. Kudos to any website that allows users to alternate between simplified and detailed views, allowing them to digest information as they prefer.
Tools and Technologies for Supporting Improved Accessibility
Today, there’s no shortage of tools and technologies for supporting improved accessibility for those with ADHD.
For starters, you can use distraction-free browser extensions like Mercury Reader (Chrome) or Reader Mode (Firefox), which reduce clutter on web pages, such as ads and pop-ups. These tools allow users to hide non-essential elements and direct a clear “reading view” for maximum productivity.
Accessibility overlays, such as Accessibly, allow individuals with disabilities to adjust text size, letter spacing, and other elements for greater control over their experience, eliminating distractions.
When it comes to e-commerce and forms, task-focused navigation accommodations are also available, such as Formsort or Typeform, which enables users to convert interfaces into transparent, single-task screens, making it easier to track progress when completing a task. Additionally, online editing tools like Grammarly allow users with ADHD to analyze text for complexity and break up long-form content into smaller, more concise paragraphs.
Accessibility’s Solutions
One of the best ways to make your website ADHD-friendly is by using website accessibility overlay widgets like Accessibly, one of the best assistive technologies around.
This lightweight web accessibility overlay widget can be hard-coded as a custom snippet into your website, and the process takes as little as five minutes. There are also native integrations available with Shopify, Elementor, and WooCommerce . A free 7-day trial provides instant access to all features before committing to a monthly subscription. What are you waiting for? Make your website ADHD-friendly and accessible to users with other disabilities by signing up for Accessibility today!
All in all, creating ADHD-friendly digital spaces is a significant undertaking to make your website a truly inclusive place for individuals with disabilities. Long-form content and cluttered layouts can quickly distract people with ADHD, resulting in increased bounce rates, lower order volume, and other key performance indicators. By following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) principles, auditing your website for accessibility barriers, incorporating assistive technologies, and implementing best practices, you can expect to see improved engagement and increased time on task, ultimately making your business even more accessible for all individuals with ADHD and other disabilities.
