cognitive-accessibility

Inclusive Design Skills

> Part of the Designer Skills suite. > Install this collection and four more with one command in Claude Code: > > /plugin marketplace add Owl-Listener/designer-skills > > This repo still works on its own. The suite just gives everyone one front door.

Agentic skills for designing accessible, inclusive products — from cognitive accessibility to adaptive interfaces, inclusive research, and accessibility decision-making.

40 skills and 18 commands across 6 plugins.

Works with any AI coding agent that supports the SKILL.md format: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, and others.

Why This Exists

Every accessibility skill set that exists today is engineer-facing. They audit code, check WCAG compliance, validate ARIA attributes, and flag contrast ratios. They treat accessibility as a technical implementation problem that gets caught at the end.

This collection operates before code. It shapes decisions about information architecture, language, interaction patterns, cognitive demands, and inclusion — the design layer that determines whether something is genuinely usable, not just technically compliant.

Accessibility isn't a code review. It's a design commitment.

Plugins

| Plugin | Skills | Commands | Description | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | cognitive-accessibility | 8 | 3 | Design for how people actually think: cognitive load, plain language, wayfinding, focus, memory, and error recovery. | | inclusive-interaction | 7 | 3 | Design multi-modal interactions that adapt to how people move, perceive, and communicate. | | accessible-content | 7 | 3 | Structure content that works for screen readers, cognitive differences, and diverse literacy levels. | | inclusive-personas | 6 | 3 | Build user stories, personas, and scenarios that include disability from the start. | | adaptive-interfaces | 6 | 3 | Design systems that respect user preferences and adapt to individual needs. | | accessibility-decisions | 6 | 3 | Document, communicate, and maintain accessibility decisions across teams and time. |

Quick Start

Claude Code

Add the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills

Then run /plugin, open the Discover tab, and install the plugins you want.

Or get this collection plus four more in one go, through the full suite:

/plugin marketplace add Owl-Listener/designer-skills

Other Tools

Skills use the universal SKILL.md format. Copy the skill folders into your tool's skills directory, or reference them directly from this repo. Each SKILL.md file works as a standalone instruction set.

For manual use without a coding agent: open any SKILL.md file, copy the contents, and paste it as context at the start of a conversation with any AI assistant. The frameworks and decision criteria work regardless of the tool.

What Are Skills and Commands?

• Skills are domain knowledge units (nouns). They teach your AI agent about a specific aspect of inclusive design — like assessing cognitive load, writing plain language content, or designing forgiving error flows.
• Commands are workflows (verbs). They chain multiple skills together to accomplish a task — like running a full cognitive accessibility review or generating an inclusive persona set.

All Commands

| Command | Plugin | Description | | --- | --- | --- | | /cognitive-accessibility:review | cognitive-accessibility | Run a full cognitive accessibility review of a flow or interface. | | /cognitive-accessibility:simplify | cognitive-accessibility | Simplify content and interactions to reduce cognitive load. | | /cognitive-accessibility:assess-load | cognitive-accessibility | Assess cognitive load across a multi-step process. | | /inclusive-interaction:audit | inclusive-interaction | Audit an interface for multi-modal interaction support. | | /inclusive-interaction:design-flow | inclusive-interaction | Design an interaction flow with inclusive input and output options. | | /inclusive-interaction:keyboard-review | inclusive-interaction | Review keyboard navigation and focus management. | | /accessible-content:review | accessible-content | Review content for accessibility across cognitive and literacy levels. | | /accessible-content:rewrite | accessible-content | Rewrite content in plain language while preserving meaning. | | /accessible-content:structure | accessible-content | Structure content for screen reader and assistive technology use. | | /inclusive-personas:generate | inclusive-personas | Generate a diverse, inclusive persona set for a product. | | /inclusive-personas:audit-stories | inclusive-personas | Audit user stories for disability inclusion. | | /inclusive-personas:scenario-map | inclusive-personas | Map inclusive usage scenarios across ability spectrums. | | /adaptive-interfaces:specify | adaptive-interfaces | Specify adaptive behaviour for an interface. | | /adaptive-interfaces:preference-audit | adaptive-interfaces | Audit respect for user preferences (motion, contrast, colour scheme). | | /adaptive-interfaces:responsive-review | adaptive-interfaces | Review responsive and flexible layout for accessibility. | | /accessibility-decisions:document | accessibility-decisions | Document accessibility decisions and tradeoffs for a feature. | | /accessibility-decisions:review | accessibility-decisions | Review and surface undocumented accessibility assumptions. | | /accessibility-decisions:handoff | accessibility-decisions | Generate an accessibility decision handoff for engineering. |

Who This Is For

• Designers who want to build accessibility into their process, not bolt it on after.
• Product managers who need to make informed accessibility tradeoffs.
• Content strategists who write for diverse cognitive and literacy levels.
• Researchers who want to include disability in their work from the start.
• Engineers who want design-informed accessibility guidance, not just code linting.
• Anyone building products used by humans in the full range of human experience.

Grounding and Sources

Every skill in this collection is grounded in established frameworks, standards, and research. Nothing here is invented — it's existing accessibility knowledge structured into a format AI agents can use.

Standards and Guidelines

| Source | Used in | What I drew from | | --- | --- | --- | | WCAG 2.2 (W3C) | All plugins | Success criteria for visual, interaction, and content accessibility | | COGA: Making Content Usable (W3C) | cognitive-accessibility | The 8 objectives for cognitive accessibility design | | COGA Issue Papers (W3C) | cognitive-accessibility | Research modules on cognitive disabilities and web access | | WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices (W3C) | inclusive-interaction, accessible-content | Keyboard patterns, roles, and states for interactive components | | CSS Media Queries Level 5 (W3C) | adaptive-interfaces | prefers-reduced-motion, prefers-contrast, prefers-color-scheme |

Frameworks and Methodologies

| Source | Used in | What I drew from | | --- | --- | --- | | Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit | inclusive-personas | Permanent, temporary, and situational impairment spectrum | | Cognitive Load Theory (John Sweller) | cognitive-accessibility | Intrinsic, extraneous, and germane load framework | | Plain Language Guidelines (US Government) | cognitive-accessibility, accessible-content | Readability principles and content simplification | | Architecture Decision Records | accessibility-decisions | Structure for documenting design decisions with context and rationale | | W3C Alt Text Decision Tree | accessible-content | Framework for choosing appropriate alt text strategy |

Research and Advocacy

| Source | Used in | What I drew from | | --- | --- | --- | | Nothing About Us Without Us (Disability rights movement) | inclusive-personas, CONTRIBUTING.md | Principle of centring lived experience in design | | WebAIM Screen Reader Survey | inclusive-interaction | Real-world assistive technology usage patterns | | WHO World Report on Disability | inclusive-personas | Global disability prevalence and population data |

What I synthesised

The accessibility-decisions plugin applies established software engineering practices (ADRs, technical debt tracking, stakeholder communication) to accessibility — a combination that doesn't have a single authoritative source but draws on how experienced accessibility practitioners actually work. The inclusive-personas plugin structures Microsoft's impairment spectrum into actionable persona and scenario templates. These are the synthesis of existing thinking, not novel frameworks.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on adding new skills, commands, and plugins.

We particularly welcome contributions from people with lived experience of disability. Nothing about us without us.

Related

Part of the Designer Skills suite, alongside design practice, AI product design, UX program management, and design leadership. Install everything with one command, or pick just the collections you need.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.