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Tutorial #15: Understanding and Evaluating Accessibility: Improving Usability for More People in More SituationsKeywords:Interaction design, accessibility, evaluation techniquesAbstract:Join this tutorial to: Understand issues of designing and evaluating for usable accessibility. Learn about specific accessibility guidelines, standards, and heuristics for addressing the needs of more users in more situations. Practice expanding existing usability testing techniques to address hands-free, eyes-free, or ears-free operation of products, software, and web pages.Target audience:Intermediate, advanced in usability;Beginners, intermediate in accessibility Topic category:Usability method implementation or adaptation, issues and strategies for experienced usability professionalsTopic Focus:Web, computer software, emerging interfaces, hardware, small devicesHandout materials:Will include copies of presentation material (“slides”); activity sheets, including usability testing plan; papers on related topics; list of resources; and checklistsOutline and Timeline
Learning ObjectivesThe primary objectives for this tutorial on accessibility and design are two-fold:
DescriptionWe all know that user-centered design (UCD) is a process that considers usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks, and workflow in the design of an interface. But what about when your customers are blind? Or your product is a mobile device that in some situations will be operated hands-free, eyes-free, or ears-free? What about when the scenario includes use of an assistive technology? Or when your business and usability goals include meeting accessibility requirements under Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Telecommunications Act, or Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act?Many of these regulations come with accessibility standards and other guidelines and online tutorials are available covering accessibility. What many usability specialists are missing is a hands-on introduction to the day-to-day issues of accessibility as they apply to usability practices in design and evaluation. And that is what this tutorial is about. This tutorial combines two previous highly rated UPA events -- a tutorial from UPA 2001 and a presentation from UPA 2000, along with related accessibility workshops given privately worldwide. Facilitators will share first-hand experiences and encourage participant contributions throughout the day. Extensive use of examples, including clips of people with disabilities using IT, and good and bad implementations will be incorporated. Tutorial materials will include a reference list and relevant papers for additional information. Understanding the Issues (1½ hours)Accessibility can be defined as the ability to use a product even when functioning under limiting conditions. Limiting conditions can be functional limitations, or disabilities — such as blindness or arthritis. Situational limitations, including constraints from the environment, circumstance, or device — such as eyes-free operation of navigation and cellular communications systems in vehicles, are another type of limiting condition. Accessibility and hands-free, eyes-free, or ears-free operation have become an important issue for many designers and usability professionals in recent years.In addition to marketing motivations for designing for limitations, recent regulatory and legal activities are providing powerful impetus for designing accessible products. For example, in the United States the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is successfully being applied to web sites; telecommunications equipment manufacturers and service providers must make their products accessible to people with disabilities where it is readily achievable under Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act; and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act states that electronic and information technologies purchased by the federal government must be accessible whenever it is not an undue burden. Activities early in the tutorial will help participants understand the issues surrounding access by users, and the importance designing for limiting conditions from the perspectives of both design and meeting business objectives. For example, as many as 72% of those over 75, and people with a temporary disability have functional limitations that affect their ability to use products, depending on the product's design -- we will show how making products accessible to this demographic also benefits those in other age groups, and complying with legislation, as well as making the product easier to market to all. Integrating Accessibility into UCD Process (½ hour)Accessibility is most efficiently and effectively implemented when included from day one of a project. Accessibility considerations come into play at each step in a user-centered design process. Participants will discuss how to include accessibility in planning and staffing projects, understanding business objectives, and product parameters; developing a vision, usability goals, and user performance requirements; conducting field studies; and developing user profiles and scenarios.Design Guidelines (½ hour)Years of research and practice have culminated in guidelines that cover development of hardware, software, and web pages. Facilitators will introduce established and recently published guidelines, including the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (under Section 508); Product Design Ideas Browser from the Trace R&D Center; and Web Content Authoring Guidelines (WCAG) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).Evaluation Techniques (3½ hours)Evaluating for accessibility — that is, assessing a product's usability from the perspective of users with functional or situational limitations — requires the same basic evaluation methods and techniques in use today, with minor modifications. Specifically, participants will learn how to include accessibility in design walkthroughs, heuristic evaluations, and usability tests. Areas of focus include web evaluation tools, screening techniques, and usability testing. Accessibility heuristics, or functional performance criteria, that usability professionals can use for design and evaluation will be covered. Facilitators will provide an introduction to web accessibility evaluation tools and clarify what can be assessed with a tool and what requires human evaluation. Participants can volunteer their websites for live demonstrations of the tools during the tutorial.The tutorial will present screening techniques that usability professionals can use for evaluation. Participants will apply a set of techniques—such as blindfolding, using low-vision simulation glasses; using white noise, wearing earplugs or ear defenders; and using one hand, using one finger, wearing heavy gloves or mittens—to screen out usability problems due to functional or situational limitations. Issues relating to usability testing using screening techniques, and people with disabilities as usability test participants will be covered. The facilitators’ experiences with usability testing will address issues such as adjustments to standard test procedures to accommodate people with disabilities in test settings, including recruiting participants; the test itself; access to facilities, prototypes, and test materials; interacting with and writing about people with disabilities; ethics; and safety. Activities will give participants a chance to actively address some of the issues. Q&A and Conclusion (1 hour)At past UPA presentations on this topic, participants asked facilitators many questions that were not brought up during the main tutorial presentation (despite the “ask questions anytime” policy). To adequately prepare this year, we will allot extra time specifically to allow participants to ask questions on related topics that were not directly addressed in the tutorial. As a conclusion, we will facilitate a discussion in which participants can share how they plan to begin implementing the techniques and thought processes presented throughout the tutorial. In the end, we hope that participants of this tutorial will understand that by integrating accessibility into design and evaluation processes, they can efficiently create products that work effectively for more people in more situations.Shawn Lawton HenryUIAccess.com Founder, Optavia Network Principle608.243.1089, shawn@uiaccess.com Shawn Henry (http://www.uiaccess.com/profile.html) helps organizations develop and implement strategies to optimize design for usability and accessibility. For over a decade, Shawn has worked with international standards bodies, research centers, government agencies, non-profit organizations, education providers, and Fortune 500 companies to advance user interface design. Shawn is an independent consultant and principal in the Optavia Network. She was a founding member of Optavia Corporation, where she previously led accessibility initiatives as director of research and development. Shawn leverages her educational background in computer science, human factors, and communications to help companies excel in their interface design and technical communications. Shawn has led user interface design efforts through all stages of development, including analysis of requirements, graphical interface and web interaction design, and usability testing of design prototypes. She has developed and led workshops on a variety of user interface and accessibility topics, including the user-centered design process, usability standards and testing, and accessible design for Web interfaces, software, and consumer products. Shawn actively advances work in the accessibility and standards fields as: a member of HFES/HCI 200, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Technical Standards Committee developing software interface standards for the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); contributor to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) work on accessibility standards; and Advisory Committee for the Trace Research and Development Center, the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Access to Information Technology funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. Shawn has published papers for Usability Professionals' Association (UPA), Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), and Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conferences as well as authoring Managing Accessibility In Technology: Bringing Together People, Processes, and Techniques For Successful Implementation and co-authoring of the "Everyone Interfaces" chapter in User Interfaces for All. Shawn developed http://www.UIAccess.com as a resource for universal interface design and "usable accessibility" information. She is particularly interested in bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in the design of human-computer interfaces. Top Ratings at UPA
Chris LawChris Law has for the past five years been chief ergonomist at the Trace Research and Development Center, a non-profit research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chris's work has focused on access to mainstream electronic products for people with disabilities, and has also covered access to computing and the Internet. He has in recent years been developing commercially transferable access techniques for mainstream electronic products, and pursuing interests in improving the means to conduct usability testing, and other product development processes, to meet the needs of people with disabilities and comply with government access legislation. He was co-chair of the R&D sector of COST219bis, a European forum on access to information technologies, until its' close at the end of 2001. Prior to Trace, Mr. Law worked on both disability and mainstream technologies at Robert Feeney Associates in England, and NCR in Scotland. Mr. Law holds an MS in Industrial Engineering (Human Factors) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BSc. in Ergonomics from Loughborough University of Technology in England. |
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