Pattern writing & designing for Cognitive Accessibility

When it comes to cognitive disabilities, making accessible patterns isn’t just about the format they’re presented in; we also need to consider how they’re constructed during the design process, and how we approach pattern writing.

Cognitive disabilities can vary greatly in their needs and severity, and there are many different types. But two key things that they all share and that need to be considered when it comes to accessibility are memory and executive function.

Making our patterns accessible for cognitive disabilities can be different to making them accessible for visual or other types of disabilities, and sometimes what’s accessible for one may not be accessible for the other. But if we want to work towards true accessibility then cognitive impairment needs to be considered, too.

I have ADHD and Autism, which are both cognitive disabilities, and have Alzheimer’s and Dementia on both sides of my family. I’m happy to share what I’ve learnt over the years, and what helps me.

Formatting, Space and Information Hierarchy

• break up paragraphs, and avoid walls of text - whether it be words or numbers. This is Accessibility 101 for many disabilities but it’s particularly important for cognitive disabilities. If there’s a list of instructions that aren’t numbered or aren’t part of the main pattern, bullet points are really helpful. Use clear headings and try to break things up into logical sections.

• similarly, whilst extra information about the pattern i.e. why you came up with the design or the story behind it may seem like a nice extras, they’re distracting and can cause someone to forget what they’re doing. Keep those out of the actual pattern if you can, or put them at the end if they’re not necessary, so that the important stuff comes first - you don’t want to overwhelm or derail someone before they’ve even started.

• keep how you present your documents as consistent as you can so that folks can become familiar with how you do things. If things move around or things change or something unexpected happens, it can really throw someone off.

  One of the things I really struggle with is the way a shop or website will change things around or rebrand. It doesn’t matter whether they add new signs for things, I’ve lost my routine and any familiarity, and I have to start from scratch learning a new system. And learning a new system is incredibly exhausting, and the loss of familiarity can cause a panic attack or meltdown.

Abbreviations and Common Terms

• abbreviations can be a hurdle but rather than remove them all, it might be better to think of how many are used within a pattern, and how. A few abbreviations may not pose a problem if they’re used regularly, as things that are consistently repeated are easier to remember. But a technique or abbreviation that’s only used once, even if it’s fully written out, could be a stumbling point.

  For instance if you can use one decrease or increase method throughout, that’s far more helpful and accessible than switching between decrease or increase methods. Or if you use two types of decreases, should you wish to mirror them, use them consistently throughout and avoid changing their context.

• common terms are often ambiguous. For example if you want someone to pick up and knit stitches for a section, don’t just say ‘pick up stitches’ - be specific and say ‘pick up and knit’ or conversely ‘pick up but do not knit’.

  There’s a lot of common terms in knitting that everyone thinks everyone knows but actually, people interpret those differently if they’re not specific. We see lots of new knitters struggle with these kinds of terms, or knitters for whom English isn’t their first language, so imagine how it must be for someone with a cognitive disability, who is unlikely to be able to retrain their brain to remember the assumed meaning. It’s better to be specific, direct and clear.

Presenting Instructions

• if you can, avoid long instructions, repeats or even long documents. The more text there is to keep track of or navigate through, the easier it is to get lost, especially if clear headings are lacking. Keep things as brief and as succinct as possible, whilst also avoiding ambiguity - which is easier said than done, I know.

  There are tools to help folk keep track of things but they’re not much use if we forget that we have those tools because they’re not used often, or if they come with a steep learning curve, or if the instructions to use them aren’t written with cognitive disabilities in mind. I can’t tell you the amount of tracking or memory apps I’ve downloaded or purchased then given up on because they’re not designed with my disabilities in mind.

• columns can be helpful, but not always, and it really does depend. For instance I find single-column pages really hard to follow if the lines of instructions aren’t long enough to cover 3 or 4 lines - I lose my place very quickly. A 2-column layout is better for me with patterns like mine where the lines of instructions tend to shorter in general.

• where possible avoid instructions that require too many steps for different sizes or different outcomes. I’ll give some examples of this as it’s not easy for me to explain:

Rnd 5: P 0 [1, 0, 1, 0], ^p2tog, ssp; rpt from ^ to last 0 [2, 2, 0, 0] sts, p2tog 0 [1, 1, 0, 0] times

An instruction like this absolutely screws with my brain and I avoid them as much as possible in my patterns. It’s not the abbreviations, it’s the different steps required at the beginning and then end of the repeat; it’s all the similar numbers and trying to work out which one I should be doing. Even with clear punctuation to break up the steps, it takes me several readings and a quiet room to understand. If this were written out in full, without any abbreviations, it would be an even bigger mess and screw with my brain even more because there’d just be even more text with no reduction in the number of steps I have to take or the decisions I have to make.

What I’d suggest is setting up repeats that don’t require this kind of instruction, and that would work with one repeat for all sizes. This is what I mean when I talk about how making something accessible for cognitive disabilities means you have to think about how something is constructed from the very beginning, and think about how many different steps someone may be asked to take.

Repeat these 44 rows a further [6, 7, 8, 9] times for a total of 7 [8, 9, 10] panels.

On the other hand, an instruction like this for different sizes is much, MUCH easier to follow. This is from one of my sideways knit patterns, so it’s a completely different type of pattern to the one above, but you can use this format for different types of repeats. My sideways patterns are incredibly popular with my Neurodivergent customers and I believe it’s because there’s one short set of instructions repeated over and over - small bite sizes chunks that get repeated are much more likely to be successful with cognitive impairment than longer chunks that are only needed once. Notice also how the total number of repeats are given, as this removes any ambiguity in this kind of instruction.

Charts

• many of us can use charts, and in lots ways charts are easier as there’s less text - numbers or words - to work through. And charts make things much clearer, visually explaining how the instructions come together, thus providing context - and context is critical as it helps us make sense of things we might not be sure of. BUT it does depend on how the charts are presented and the types of symbols used.

• to show repeats in charts I’ve always avoided red, which for some reason is really common amongst designers - I find it aggressive and distracting so I use a much thicker very dark black line for repeat boxes. I avoid colour in my instructions full stop because it’s distracting.

• chart symbols are a whole subject in themselves! The ‘blank square = knit stitch’ short-circuits my brain as it makes no sense to me. I use the symbol family that looks like the stitch the knitter is being asked to make - this is one less step for us to jump through, as although that kind of symbol to stitch translation may be instant in a neurotypical brain, it very much isn’t in ours. Again, not all of our needs are the same but our brains will likely just pass over gaps and miss any inferred meaning so again think about how you’re presenting the steps, and whether the chart symbols visually look like the stitch or the manoeuvre.

• don’t be afraid to reconsider standards, whether it be chart symbols or abbreviations. A lot of what is considered ‘standard’ in our industry has been built on neurotypical - i.e. someone who isn’t neurodivergent or who doesn’t have cognitive impairment - norms. Those ‘standards’ were never developed with us in mind and simply put, to suggest that we should stick to them only perpetuates our exclusion.

  ………………………………………………

This isn’t a complete list by any means, but I hope it provides some food for thought.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time, as I’ve noticed more and more how as whole folks don’t consider cognitive disabilities much when we consider accessibility, or that we only consider cognitive decline as part of the ageing process. Yet there are many of us who, as designers, manage cognitive disabilities daily at any age and I’ve been paying attention to how that comes through in our pattern writing, and the responses we get to that.

Please do share any thoughts you may have about how to improve things for us, or things that have worked for you! Similarly, if you’ve any questions ask away and I’ll do what I can to respond.