EUPA/HCI2002: Designing Accessible Products

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." Tim Berners-Lee

Designing systems with accessibility in mind is something we should all, not only be thinking about, but also actually putting into practice. This well-presented session, by a team of usability professionals from IBM in the UK (Martin Arnold, Paul Hopewell, Claire Paddison, Phil Parry and Nadya Sustache) provided a good overview of how disabled users (37 million in the EU and 54 million in the US) interact with information systems and the importance of a "design for all" approach.

Martin and Nadya set the scene nicely in their introduction, clearly defining the term “Accessibility” and summarising the various user and disability types (e.g. vision, hearing, cognitive and mobility). The temporal nature of certain disabilities was also raised (such as simply forgetting your glasses or breaking a finger), highlighting how such disabilities can affect us all at some stage in our lives.

Paul Hopewell then continued the session by giving a presentation and demonstration on assistive technologies. After an overview of various hardware and software products which help disabled users accomplish their goals (examples included Braille displays, screen magnifiers and eye tracking devices), Paul then went on to do a fascinating presentation on how he, as a visually impaired user himself, uses a screen reader to assist him with his work as a software developer. The demo clearly illustrated some of the problems raised when "listening to" (as opposed to seeing) what is on the screen, providing a number of challenges, even for the most skilled developer. We as designers/developers can clearly do a whole lot more to make our applications a lot more accessible (for example, we should ensure all icons and images have textual support via tool tips and labels as these are “read out” by the screen reader).

Claire Paddison presented the next section, summarising how IBM have created a Heuristics Evaluation database (based on Lotus Notes) for internal use within the company. Containing various sets of usability heuristics derived by IBM and other external sources (e.g. Nielsen), the database is designed to simplify the management of a heuristic evaluation by structuring the process as a workflow application. A key advantage of the system is that it allows the collection and integration of results from multiple evaluators, working well as a simple collaboration tool. The findings input by the evaluators can also be used to automatically generate reports. With accessibility legislation likely to affect us all in the future, tools such as these will prove a valuable aid in helping us make our systems compliant.

The final section by Phil Parry was broadly entitled User-Centred Design ("building ease of use into the total user experience"). After an overview of the design process, the majority of the rest of the talk concentrated on the specific example of creating an Accessible Syntax Diagram (often used for specifying programming language syntax). Two well-known specification notations were first discussed, BNF (Backus Naur Form) and the Railroad Syntax diagram. A screen reader was then used to “read out” the Railroad approach, to illustrate just how poorly accessible this notation was. Phil then went on to describe how the team arrived at a new notation termed the “Dotted Decimal” and the results of a usability experiment comparing it with BNF. Key findings were that screen-reader users and sighted users could both use the new notation, and although screen-reader users found the new notation easier to learn than BNF, those familiar with BNF still preferred that format.

Dave Clarke
Visualize Software Ltd

Links of interest:

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C-innovate, a user-centred consultancy based at the Sussex Innovation Centre at the University of Sussex, has won an award for its research into mobile technology and innovation in the public sector.

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Textic Limited has just announced the commercial launch of Talklets, a Web 2.0 service that ‘voice enables’ text-based Web content.

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Source: UXMatters, 15 July 2008
 
Being a manager of UX is no better — and no worse — than being a great designer or user researcher, but the roles are very different.