AXS AUDIT GUIDE
Cognitive accessibility is about how easy a website is to understand, remember, navigate and use. It matters for many people, including people with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, acquired brain injury, learning disabilities, anxiety, fatigue or low digital confidence.
A cognitive accessibility audit does not diagnose users. It looks at barriers in the content, design and journey. The aim is to reduce unnecessary effort and make digital tasks clearer for more people.
AXS Audit helps teams include cognitive accessibility signals alongside WCAG scanning, while AXS Toolbar gives visitors user-facing tools to personalise, simplify and navigate content.
Check whether words, headings, instructions and labels are easy to understand.
Look for dense content, too many choices, unclear steps or avoidable memory demands.
Review forms, errors, navigation and task flow so people can complete actions with confidence.
What to check
A website can pass many technical accessibility checks and still be hard to use. Cognitive accessibility asks whether people can understand what is happening, what they need to do next and how to recover if something goes wrong.
Useful checks include heading clarity, plain language, predictable navigation, consistent labels, manageable forms, visible progress, helpful errors, reduced distraction and whether key information is easy to find.
This connects strongly to WCAG 2.2, but it also needs judgement about real people, real tasks and real contexts.
Examples
Cognitive barriers often appear as small pieces of friction that build up. A button might use vague text, a form might ask for too much information at once, or a page might use long paragraphs where people need short steps.
People may abandon a journey not because they cannot use technology, but because the design asks them to process too much, remember too much, or interpret unclear instructions under pressure.
A good audit should describe these barriers in practical terms so content, design and development teams know what to change.
| Barrier | Why it matters | Better approach |
|---|---|---|
| Dense instructions | People may miss steps or feel overloaded. | Break tasks into short, ordered actions. |
| Unclear link text | People cannot predict where a link will go. | Use descriptive, consistent link text. |
| Long forms | Memory, fatigue and anxiety can increase. | Group questions, show progress and save work. |
| Unhelpful errors | People may not know how to recover. | Explain what happened and how to fix it. |
AXS ecosystem
AXS Audit helps teams identify cognitive friction and accessibility issues so they can improve the website itself. It supports governance, remediation and evidence of progress.
AXS Toolbar supports visitors in the live experience. It can help people simplify content, use text-to-speech, describe images and personalise the interface. The toolbar is helpful, but it should sit alongside accessible design, content and code.
For organisations that want a deeper review, Website Accessibility Audits can add expert manual assessment of journeys, content and user impact.
Accessibility audit support
AXS Audit can help you identify and prioritise accessibility issues. Calling All Minds can also support manual audit review when judgement, user journeys or stakeholder evidence need deeper attention.
These pages give more context and connect this guide to practical support.
Further reading from Calling All Minds on this topic.
Short answers, written in plain language.
Some cognitive accessibility issues are addressed through WCAG, especially around clear instructions, errors, navigation and readability. A cognitive audit also uses judgement to look at cognitive load and real journeys.
Many people benefit, including people with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, acquired brain injury, learning disabilities, anxiety, fatigue and people using a service under stress.
AXS Audit is designed to include cognitive accessibility signals alongside WCAG scanning and remediation guidance.
Last checked: May 2026.
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