Cognitive Accessibility

Cognitive accessibility is designing so that people with differences in memory, attention, processing speed, language, and executive function can use a product. That includes the neurodivergent population, people under stress or time pressure, and anyone navigating an unfamiliar or complex task.

It is not a smaller version of WCAG conformance. Conformance is largely about structure that assistive technology can parse: contrast, labels, roles. Cognitive accessibility is about whether the interface makes sense: clear language, manageable steps, forgiving error states, layouts that do not overload working memory. The W3C Cognitive Accessibility Task Force documents this gap.

You cannot fully measure it with a scanner, because it is a usability problem, not a markup problem. The way to verify it is to test with people for whom cognitive load is a daily constraint, and watch where the interface asks too much.

That is the layer OpenScouter is built to surface. It is a usability question first, with an accessibility benefit that follows.