Universal Access to Technology

1
Universal Access to Technology

2
User-centered system Design is iterative!

• DESIGN TEST

3
Case Study

• Computer Aided Conversation
• for Severely Physically Impaired
• Non-speaking People
• (Norman Alm et al.)

4
Why I like this article

• Solves a real problem
• Tells a clear story
• Did a terrific analysis of the task
• Technical solution is informed by a theory of
  communication
• Good evaluation at the end

5
Conversation

• Turn-taking
• Adjacency pairs
• Topic structure
• Perspectives

6
What the researchers did

• Task analysis
• Had real user in mind
• Simulation with index cards
• Role playing
• Iteration
• Screen design
• Evaluation
• Healthy users
• Non-speaking user

7
(No Transcript)
8
Computer-assisted conversation

• A I went to France last year, to Marseilles.
• B Ive never visited Marseilles, Ive sort of
  driven round the outskirts, but never actually
  gone into Marseilles.
• A Surprisingly, its really beautiful.
• B Really? I just imagine it as sort of a port,
  and just like any other large city, with nothing
  particularly interesting.
• A You expect a major port to be fairly grotty,
  dont you ?
• B LAUGHl Thats right LAUGH.
• A We also visited other places on the coast, but
  we decided to give St. Tropez a miss.
• B Thats one place Id like to go.
• A Ive heard its pretty grotty now, and
  crowded.
• B Really ? Oh, well, maybe give it a miss then.
  Of course, theres always the chance to see
  Brigitte Bardot there.
• A Whatever turns you on.

9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
Whats the web like if you cant see it?

• A point of view by Chieko Asakawa
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act All
  federal agencies must make their info available
  to people with disabilities
• How?
• Screen readers, alt texts, skip-navigation links

12
More and more images, with more and more alt
texts
13
Whats the web like if you cant see it?

• These days, Web pages are becoming larger and
  visually more complex using layout tables,
  images, colors and other visual effects. Thus,
  one page contains more various types of
  information than ever before. This means that
  blind users need to spend more time on one page
  to extract the information they need, since voice
  browsers (in this discussion, voice browser means
  both self-talking browsers and screen readers)
  present information serially using a
  text-to-speech (TTS) engine.
• (from Asakawa, 2005)

14
(No Transcript)
15
Skip navigation link

• Alt text

16

• The irony sometimes the very features meant to
  make the page more accessible actually makeit
  worse
• Asakawas example of empty images used to space
  real images With no alt text, these were
  invisible to her. With alt text added, she had
  to listen to lots of spacer gif readouts!

17
Some ways of improving accessibility

• Guidelines, legislation, and standards
• (skip links, content anchors, alt text, etc.)
• Have sighted designers experience a web page as
  the blind do!
• aDesigner - simulates blind experience
• Estimates reaching times for key parts of page

18
aDesigner

• Inaccessible parts are darkened

19
Some ways of improving accessibility

• Guidelines, legislation, and standards
• (skip links, content anchors, alt text, etc.)
• Have sighted designers experience a web page as
  the blind do!
• aDesigner - simulates blind experience
• Estimates reaching times for key parts of page
• Intelligent parsing of web pages (HearSay)
• Treat form-filling as a kind of dialogue
• See Tonys fax form example
• Include methods for repair and managing
  interruptions

20
(No Transcript)