Accessibility and Deceptive Design in Parental Control Features - Barriers to Effective Caregiver Supervision
Resumo
Digital platforms increasingly provide parental control features to support caregivers in supervising children’s online experiences. However, the mere availability of such features does not guarantee that caregivers can effectively locate, understand, and configure them. Our study investigates whether parental control interfaces contain accessibility barriers and deceptive design patterns that may undermine effective supervision.We conducted a systematic inspection protocol of 15 parental-control configuration flows comprising 150 screens across TikTok, Instagram, Discord, and YouTube. The analysis combined accessibility criteria derived from ABNT NBR 17060, ABNT NBR 17225, andWCAG 2.2 with deceptive pattern taxonomies proposed by Gray et al. (2018, 2024) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). To support cross-platform comparison, we operationalized three analytical indicators that capture cognitive load, configuration friction, and the co-occurrence of accessibility barriers and deceptive design. The results reveal that accessibility limitations and deceptive patterns frequently appear together in parental-control interfaces, creating cumulative interaction barriers that hinder caregiver supervision. Based on these findings, we developed a set of medium-fidelity prototypes grounded in accessibility standards and the Child Rights by Design framework. Such redesign illustrates how identified barriers can be mitigated through more transparent, accessible, and caregiver-centered interfaces. These findings suggest that parental controls alone are insufficient for effective protection and highlight the need for transparency, accessibility, and rights-oriented design practices aligned with children’s rights and regulations.
Palavras-chave:
Parental Control, Deceptive Patterns, Accessibility, Child Safety
Referências
5Rights Foundation and Digital Futures Commission. 2023. Child Rights by Design. 5Rights Foundation. [link]
Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas. 2022. ABNTNBR 17060: Acessibilidade em aplicativos para dispositivos móveis — Requisitos. ABNT.
Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas. 2025. ABNTNBR 17225: Acessibilidade em conteúdo e aplicações web — Requisitos. ABNT.
Brasil. 2025. Lei n. 15.211, de 2 de setembro de 2025: Dispõe sobre a proteção de crianças e adolescentes em plataformas digitais (ECA Digital). Diário Oficial da União. [link]
Harry Brignull. 2023. Deceptive Patterns: Exposing the Tricks Tech Companies Use to Control You. Testimonium Ltd., London. [link]
Bernardo Bueno, Laura Magalhães Moreira, Juliana Potter, Aline Restano, and Daniel Tornaim Spritzer. 2025. Digital Education is a Constant Effort: Reflections on Parental Mediation in Children’s Use of Social Media. In Survey on Internet Use by Children in Brazil: ICT Kids Online Brazil 2024. Cetic.br, Brazil. [link]
Amanda Coelho, Gabriel Lima, Lucas Melo, Levi Ribeiro, and Ticianne Darin. 2025. Shades of Manipulation: A Large-Scale Analysis of Deceptive Design in Brazilian Mobile Applications. In Anais do XXIV Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais (Belo Horizonte/MG). SBC, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil, 1157–1182. DOI: 10.5753/ihc.2025.10905
Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil. 2025. TIC Kids Online Brasil 2025: Pesquisa sobre o uso da Internet por crianças e adolescentes no Brasil. Technical Report. NIC.br, São Paulo. [link]
Gregory W. Corder and Dale I. Foreman. 2014. Nonparametric Statistics: A Step-by-Step Approach (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ. DOI: 10.1002/9781118142486
Linda Di Geronimo, Larissa Braz, Enrico Fregnan, Fabio Palomba, and Alberto Bacchelli. 2020. UI Dark Patterns and Where to Find Them: A Study on Mobile Applications and User Perception. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Honolulu, HI, USA) (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376600
European Commission. 2025. Commission Publishes Guidelines on the Protection of Minors under the Digital Services Act. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
European Union. 2022. Digital Services Act - Article 28 Protection of Minors. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
Arup Kumar Ghosh, Karla Badillo-Urquiola, Shion Guha, Joseph J. LaViola Jr, and Pamela J. Wisniewski. 2018. Safety vs. Surveillance: What Children Have to Say about Mobile Apps for Parental Control. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: 10.1145/3173574.3173698
Colin M. Gray, Yubo Kou, Bryan Battles, Joseph Hoggatt, and Austin L. Toombs. 2018. The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: 10.1145/3173574.3174108
Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Teixeira Santos, Nataliia Bielova, and Thomas Mildner. 2024. An Ontology of Dark Patterns Knowledge: Foundations, Definitions, and a Pathway for Shared Knowledge-Building. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Honolulu, HI, USA) (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 289, 22 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3613904.3642436
Shun Hidaka, Sota Kobuki, Mizuki Watanabe, and Katie Seaborn. 2023. Linguistic Dead-Ends and Alphabet Soup: Finding Dark Patterns in Japanese Apps. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany) (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 3, 13 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3580942
Sonia Livingstone and Ellen Helsper. 2008. Parental Mediation of Children’s Internet Use. Journal of Broadcasting Electronic Media 52 (12 2008), 581–599. DOI: 10.1080/08838150802437396
Movimento Web para Todos. 2024. Pesquisa de Acessibilidade Digital: sites brasileiros 2024. Technical Report. Movimento Web para Todos, São Paulo. [link]
Vânia P. A. Neris, Jean Clemisson Santos Rosa, Cristiano Maciel, Vinicius Carvalho Pereira, Vinícius F. Galvão, and Isabela L. Arruda. 2024. GranDIHC-BR 2025-2035 - GC4: Sociocultural Aspects in Human-Computer Interaction. In Proceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 20, 14 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3702038.3702057
NIC.br / Ceweb.br. 2023. Todos na Web: Conferência de Acessibilidade Digital. NIC.br. [link]
J. Nielsen. 2000. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (1st ed.). New Riders Publishing.
Oecd. 2022. Dark commercial patterns. OECD Digital Economy Papers 336. OECD Publishing. DOI: 10.1787/44f5e846-en
Ofcom. 2025. Protecting Children from Harms Online. Accessed: 202605-27. [link]
Pew Research Center. 2024. Teens and Video Games Today. (May 2024). Accessed: 2026-08-20. [link]
Irwin Reyes, Primal Wijesekera, Joel Reardon, Amit Elazari, Abbas Razaghpanah, Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, and Serge Egelman. 2018. “Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?” Examining COPPA Compliance at Scale. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2018 (04 2018), 63–83. DOI: 10.1515/popets-2018-0021
John Sweller. 1988. Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning. Cognitive Science 12, 2 (1988), 257–285. arXiv: [link] DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4
John Sweller. 2010. Element Interactivity and Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germane Cognitive Load. Educational Psychology Review 22 (06 2010), 123–138. DOI: 10.1007/s10648-010-9128-5
John Sweller, Jeroen J. G. Van Merrienboer, and Fred Paas. 2019. Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later. Educational Psychology Review 31 (06 2019), 261–292. DOI: 10.1007/s10648-019-09465-5
Thomas Tullis andWilliamAlbert. 2008. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics: Second Edition. Morgan Kaufmann.
UK Government. 2023. Online Safety Act 2023. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
United States Senate. 2024. Kids Online Safety Act. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. 2024. Introduction to Web Accessibility. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). [link]
Ge Wang, Jun Zhao, Max Van Kleek, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2021. Protection or Punishment? Relating the Design Space of Parental Control Apps and Perceptions about Them to Support Parenting for Online Safety. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 343 (Oct. 2021), 26 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3476084
Ruiqi Zhang and Oo-Sung Son. 2025. A Measurement Model for Visual Complexity in HCI: Focusing on Visual Elements in Mobile GUI Design. Electronics 14 (02 2025), 942. DOI: 10.3390/electronics14050942
Pengfei Zhao, Natalie Bazarova, and Natercia Valle. 2023. Digital parenting divides: the role of parental capital and digital parenting readiness in parental digital mediation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 28 (08 2023). DOI: 10.1093/jcmc/zmad032,
Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas. 2022. ABNTNBR 17060: Acessibilidade em aplicativos para dispositivos móveis — Requisitos. ABNT.
Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas. 2025. ABNTNBR 17225: Acessibilidade em conteúdo e aplicações web — Requisitos. ABNT.
Brasil. 2025. Lei n. 15.211, de 2 de setembro de 2025: Dispõe sobre a proteção de crianças e adolescentes em plataformas digitais (ECA Digital). Diário Oficial da União. [link]
Harry Brignull. 2023. Deceptive Patterns: Exposing the Tricks Tech Companies Use to Control You. Testimonium Ltd., London. [link]
Bernardo Bueno, Laura Magalhães Moreira, Juliana Potter, Aline Restano, and Daniel Tornaim Spritzer. 2025. Digital Education is a Constant Effort: Reflections on Parental Mediation in Children’s Use of Social Media. In Survey on Internet Use by Children in Brazil: ICT Kids Online Brazil 2024. Cetic.br, Brazil. [link]
Amanda Coelho, Gabriel Lima, Lucas Melo, Levi Ribeiro, and Ticianne Darin. 2025. Shades of Manipulation: A Large-Scale Analysis of Deceptive Design in Brazilian Mobile Applications. In Anais do XXIV Simpósio Brasileiro sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais (Belo Horizonte/MG). SBC, Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil, 1157–1182. DOI: 10.5753/ihc.2025.10905
Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil. 2025. TIC Kids Online Brasil 2025: Pesquisa sobre o uso da Internet por crianças e adolescentes no Brasil. Technical Report. NIC.br, São Paulo. [link]
Gregory W. Corder and Dale I. Foreman. 2014. Nonparametric Statistics: A Step-by-Step Approach (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ. DOI: 10.1002/9781118142486
Linda Di Geronimo, Larissa Braz, Enrico Fregnan, Fabio Palomba, and Alberto Bacchelli. 2020. UI Dark Patterns and Where to Find Them: A Study on Mobile Applications and User Perception. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Honolulu, HI, USA) (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376600
European Commission. 2025. Commission Publishes Guidelines on the Protection of Minors under the Digital Services Act. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
European Union. 2022. Digital Services Act - Article 28 Protection of Minors. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
Arup Kumar Ghosh, Karla Badillo-Urquiola, Shion Guha, Joseph J. LaViola Jr, and Pamela J. Wisniewski. 2018. Safety vs. Surveillance: What Children Have to Say about Mobile Apps for Parental Control. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: 10.1145/3173574.3173698
Colin M. Gray, Yubo Kou, Bryan Battles, Joseph Hoggatt, and Austin L. Toombs. 2018. The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal QC, Canada) (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI: 10.1145/3173574.3174108
Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Teixeira Santos, Nataliia Bielova, and Thomas Mildner. 2024. An Ontology of Dark Patterns Knowledge: Foundations, Definitions, and a Pathway for Shared Knowledge-Building. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Honolulu, HI, USA) (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 289, 22 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3613904.3642436
Shun Hidaka, Sota Kobuki, Mizuki Watanabe, and Katie Seaborn. 2023. Linguistic Dead-Ends and Alphabet Soup: Finding Dark Patterns in Japanese Apps. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Hamburg, Germany) (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 3, 13 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3580942
Sonia Livingstone and Ellen Helsper. 2008. Parental Mediation of Children’s Internet Use. Journal of Broadcasting Electronic Media 52 (12 2008), 581–599. DOI: 10.1080/08838150802437396
Movimento Web para Todos. 2024. Pesquisa de Acessibilidade Digital: sites brasileiros 2024. Technical Report. Movimento Web para Todos, São Paulo. [link]
Vânia P. A. Neris, Jean Clemisson Santos Rosa, Cristiano Maciel, Vinicius Carvalho Pereira, Vinícius F. Galvão, and Isabela L. Arruda. 2024. GranDIHC-BR 2025-2035 - GC4: Sociocultural Aspects in Human-Computer Interaction. In Proceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 20, 14 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3702038.3702057
NIC.br / Ceweb.br. 2023. Todos na Web: Conferência de Acessibilidade Digital. NIC.br. [link]
J. Nielsen. 2000. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity (1st ed.). New Riders Publishing.
Oecd. 2022. Dark commercial patterns. OECD Digital Economy Papers 336. OECD Publishing. DOI: 10.1787/44f5e846-en
Ofcom. 2025. Protecting Children from Harms Online. Accessed: 202605-27. [link]
Pew Research Center. 2024. Teens and Video Games Today. (May 2024). Accessed: 2026-08-20. [link]
Irwin Reyes, Primal Wijesekera, Joel Reardon, Amit Elazari, Abbas Razaghpanah, Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, and Serge Egelman. 2018. “Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?” Examining COPPA Compliance at Scale. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2018 (04 2018), 63–83. DOI: 10.1515/popets-2018-0021
John Sweller. 1988. Cognitive Load During Problem Solving: Effects on Learning. Cognitive Science 12, 2 (1988), 257–285. arXiv: [link] DOI: 10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4
John Sweller. 2010. Element Interactivity and Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germane Cognitive Load. Educational Psychology Review 22 (06 2010), 123–138. DOI: 10.1007/s10648-010-9128-5
John Sweller, Jeroen J. G. Van Merrienboer, and Fred Paas. 2019. Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later. Educational Psychology Review 31 (06 2019), 261–292. DOI: 10.1007/s10648-019-09465-5
Thomas Tullis andWilliamAlbert. 2008. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics: Second Edition. Morgan Kaufmann.
UK Government. 2023. Online Safety Act 2023. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
United States Senate. 2024. Kids Online Safety Act. Accessed: 2026-05-27. [link]
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. 2024. Introduction to Web Accessibility. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). [link]
Ge Wang, Jun Zhao, Max Van Kleek, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2021. Protection or Punishment? Relating the Design Space of Parental Control Apps and Perceptions about Them to Support Parenting for Online Safety. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 343 (Oct. 2021), 26 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3476084
Ruiqi Zhang and Oo-Sung Son. 2025. A Measurement Model for Visual Complexity in HCI: Focusing on Visual Elements in Mobile GUI Design. Electronics 14 (02 2025), 942. DOI: 10.3390/electronics14050942
Pengfei Zhao, Natalie Bazarova, and Natercia Valle. 2023. Digital parenting divides: the role of parental capital and digital parenting readiness in parental digital mediation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 28 (08 2023). DOI: 10.1093/jcmc/zmad032,
Publicado
27/10/2026
Como Citar
SANTOS, Raquel S.; VALENÇA, George.
Accessibility and Deceptive Design in Parental Control Features - Barriers to Effective Caregiver Supervision. In: BRAZILIAN SYMPOSIUM ON MULTIMEDIA AND THE WEB (WEBMEDIA), 32. , 2026, Lavras/MG.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2026
.
p. 38-46.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/webmedia.2026.30240.
