A Tangled Web? How People with Learning Disabilities Negotiate the World Wide Web: The Accumulating Evidence

In the 20 plus years of the World Wide Web as a mass communications and information channel, only a small body of research has studied usability issues of the Web for this cohort. This review examines historic and current research and thinking around effective web design for people with Learning Disabilities, including an exploration both of methods used and key findings. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken encompassing material from the fields of education, social sciences, computer science and health. In examining the literature, an analytical proforma was used to elicit information, evaluate and compare studies. Results suggest that, unsurprisingly, finding content from a large quantity of text, scrolling and navigating pages are all problematic. Less predictably, and despite standard guidelines on web usability with this cohort, which exhorting web developers and information providers to include images to aid content understanding, research in this area has produced contradictory findings, from having little or no benefit in terms of access to information, to significantly aiding comprehension. The wide focus of the studies, different methodologies adopted, and varying cohorts who are labelled as having 'learning, 'intellectual' or 'cognitive' 'disabilities' or 'difficulties' hampers the development of a reliable evidence base on the issues.