Juror Information on the Web: A Study of Hispanic Populated Texas Counties

In response to the initiative of providing juror education materials online, this study proposes that unless Web sites are designed in a usable fashion, this initiative could fail to enhance jury response and further aggravate the problem of underrepresentation by minorities. This study suggests that all online juror information Web sites be analyzed for “usability” and “design” if they are to be an effective education tool. In addition, this study proposes to compare responses to county Web sites in order to gauge bias responses of participants to their own county’s Web site vs. other county Web sites

Experiences of People with Visual Impairments in Accessing Online Information and Services: A Systematic Literature Review

The World Wide Web is the largest source of electronic information in the world. Over the years, rapid advances in the internet have made it less accessible thereby making it increasingly difficult for people with visual impairments to access online information and services. This paper systematically reviews previous research to identify challenges that people with visual impairments face, and the role of accessibility technologies and guidelines to support people with visual impairments in their access to online information and services. The findings discuss three categories emerged from the literature: inaccessible content for the visually impaired, improving website accessibility for the visually impaired, and accessibility technologies and their benefits and limitations for people with visual impairments. The findings further discuss the usability issues which are present in accessing online content, the different attempts that have been made to mitigate these problems, and the different guidelines and tools that can be adopted by web designers to make websites more accessible for the visually impaired. It also discusses the versatility and availability of various accessibility technologies. Although these technologies provide basic access to online information, they are greatly limited in their functionality. Therefore, it is up to the web designers to change their perceptions when designing websites. With the proper use of the guidelines, the capabilities of accessibility technologies can be accommodated in making information provided accessible to all users including those with visual impairments. The contributions of this research are that it offers a rigorous narrative review to summarise the state of knowledge on challenges that people with visual impairments face in accessing online information and services, the support and limitations of accessibility technologies in addressing some of these challenges. In addition, this study identifies gaps and areas that deserve more scrutiny in future research including digital exclusion issues among the visually impaired, explanation on the unwillingness of web designers to develop accessible websites, improvements to accessibility technologies to support increasingly visually complex websites, among others. Since the visually impaired are a diverse group with different degrees of impairments, needs and preferences, we encourage researchers to involve them in future studies. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol11/iss2/3

Foregrounding accessibility for user experience design

textI am interested in creating generative tools and techniques for designing accessible user experiences for end users. As a user experience designer, I am working on embracing the web accessibility standards and guidelines and including them from the beginning of the User Experience (UX) design process. My projects are directed at facilitating design students and professionals to understand two things: that the broad concept of web accessibility is important, and how they can embed web accessibility into the UX design process at a very early stage. To do this, I used different media (website, posters and videos etc.) to create awareness and educate designers in an interesting, simple and engaging way. In this report, I will discuss the definition and role of accessible design, identify limitations in existing tools and methods, and demonstrate how future designers might research, prototype, analyze, and implement their designs for all users.Desig

Bridging the Gap: An Exploration of Visual Design Criteria Found in the "Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005" (AODA)

Information and communication technology such as World Wide Web have gradually become implanted in every aspect of individuals life such as education and training, employment, government, health care, and more. Web provides valuable resources and information for web users including people with disabilities and help them tackle several tasks that would otherwise need much more effort to be done. Accordingly, web accessibility creates a guideline with the aim of making the content of each web page available for a wider range of people with disability, has reached a new level of importance. For this importance, the government of Ontario passed a law titled the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), 2005, in which all internet and digital services must comply with accessibility guideline by 2025. Several researchers show a gap between professional design work and technically driven accessibility design guidelines. One of the reasons for this gap is an absence of concern for visual design during the process of implementing accessibility guidelines. The aim of this paper is to bridge the existing gap between accessibility and visual design to improve the overall usability and functionality of the system. In order to achieve this, I first identify and explain the visual design related criteria of AODA guidelines, their requirements and their impact on accessibility design. Then I demonstrate my experiment with utilizing visual design elements through the implementation of visual design principles on two selected websites to create an accessible web page that is not only usable but also has an aesthetically appealing interface

The Impact of Visual Design on Web Persuasiveness

Many commentators of web persuasion have suggested that content is the key factor responsible for creating credible (and therefore persuasive) websites. Research in a variety of fields has been devoted to identifying accurate methods of determining a website\u27s trustworthiness in order to help organizations promote credibility and teach users to critically analyze it. By focusing on the credibility of content, however, researchers are promoting an unbalanced perspective of web persuasiveness that privileges textual content over visual design. This thesis hypothesizes that visual design significantly impacts web persuasiveness. First, exploration of current theories of web persuasiveness reveals the importance of persuasion in measuring a website\u27s success and the need to expand consideration of persuasive factors beyond the credibility of content. Next, Chapter 2 demonstrates the impact of visual design through explanation of the perceptual process and the theory of halo effect. Then, design principles from theorists such as Tufte, Kress and Van Leeuwen, Mullet and Sano, and Kostelnick and Roberts are suggested as a means for determining whether or not a visual design is \u27attractive.\u27 To study the effects of these design principles (or their absence) on web persuasiveness, I conducted a pilot study where one group of participants used an \u27attractive\u27 website while another group used an \u27unattractive\u27 version of the same website. Results from this study suggest that visual design does have a positive impact on web persuasion

Looks Matter: The Impact of Visual and Inclusive Design on Usability, Accessibility, and Online Learning

The recent expansion of digital scholarship has largely failed to take into account issues of accessibility and inclusive design. Likewise, the connection between accessibility and visual design is often overlooked in creating online learning tools. This gap is most often caused by an emphasis on delivering content rather than designing sites to be both visually appealing and effective in teaching concepts to students of all abilities and learning styles. In this chapter, we will argue that an emphasis on visual design in the creation of online learning objects enhances both accessibility and pedagogy

Using Cascading Style Sheets to Design a Fly-Out Menu with Microsoft Visual Studio

The menu has become an integrated component within nearly all professionally designed websites. This teaching tip presents a no-code way to design either a vertical or a horizontal fly-out menu by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) within Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. The approach described in this tip helps students fully understand how to visually create a professional menu for a website, and also serves as an introduction to CSS

Looks Matter: The Impact of Visual and Inclusive Design on Usability, Accessibility, and Online Learning

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145183/1/Cordell_Gomis_Looks matter.pd