Factors Affecting the Accessibility of IT Artifacts : A Systematic Review

Accessibility awareness and development have improved in the past two decades, but many users still encounter accessibility barriers when using information technology (IT) artifacts (e.g., user interfaces and websites). Current research in information systems and human-computer interaction disciplines explores methods, techniques, and factors affecting the accessibility of IT artifacts for a particular population and provides solutions to address these barriers. However, design realized in one solution should be used to provide accessibility to the widest range of users, which requires an integration of solutions. To identify the factors that cause accessibility barriers and the solutions for users with different needs, a systematic literature review was conducted. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by revealing (1) management- and development-level factors, and (2) user perspective factors affecting accessibility that address different accessibility barriers to different groups of population (based on the International Classification of Functioning by the World Health Organization). Based on these findings, we synthesize and illustrate the factors and solutions that need to be addressed when creating an accessible IT artifact.© 2022 by the Association for Information Systems. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and full citation on the first page. Copyright for components of this work owned by others than the Association for Information Systems must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or fee. Request permission to publish from: AIS Administrative Office, P.O. Box 2712 Atlanta, GA, 30301-2712 Attn: Reprints are via e-mail from [email protected]=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Factors Affecting the Accessibility of IT Artifacts: A Systematic Review

Accessibility awareness and development have improved in the past two decades, but many users still encounter accessibility barriers when using information technology (IT) artifacts (e.g., user interfaces and websites). Current research in information systems and human-computer interaction disciplines explores methods, techniques, and factors affecting the accessibility of IT artifacts for a particular population and provides solutions to address these barriers. However, design realized in one solution should be used to provide accessibility to the widest range of users, which requires an integration of solutions. To identify the factors that cause accessibility barriers and the solutions for users with different needs, a systematic literature review was conducted. This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by revealing (1) management- and development-level factors, and (2) user perspective factors affecting accessibility that address different accessibility barriers to different groups of population (based on the International Classification of Functioning by the World Health Organization). Based on these findings, we synthesize and illustrate the factors and solutions that need to be addressed when creating an accessible IT artifact

Towards Design Theory for Accessible IT Artefacts

Accessibility in the use of information technology (IT) artefacts, such as websites, applications, and user interfaces, means that they are designed in such a way that people with the broadest range of abilities can use them. However, although accessibility is a human right, IT artefacts often remain inaccessible. Aside from the available accessibility guidelines, we need sufficient design theories that explicitly state how accessibility should be addressed and designed to develop accessible IT artefacts for all users. This dissertation summarises four articles that address this problem. These studies are conducted with qualitative approaches that include a narrative literature review, a systematic literature review and a design science method comprising a participatory design and interviews. The first article develops an explaining theory of accessibility to gain an understanding of the construct of accessibility, showing possible variables of human abilities, tasks and contexts and their relationships in IT use. The second article illustrates the factors in management, development, user, and IT artefact features, including the roles and actions that these domains have and how they affect the realisation of accessibility. The other two articles contribute to accessibility guidance to improve and support content creators’ text production and writing process of accessible online text in the web context. The dissertation underscores three key determinants of the knowledge of accessibility: (1) assumptions of users’ abilities; (2) users’ actual needs; and (3) factors in the development chain. The foregoing factors contribute to the knowledge of accessibility and would help researchers, particularly design scientists, form prescriptive knowledge for practitioners to achieve accessible IT artefacts. Thus, researchers could better identify the variables, relationships and affecting factors in human abilities, management, development, content creation, tasks, and contexts that need to be addressed when designing IT artefacts for certain tasks and use contexts.Informaatioteknologia-artefaktien (IT-artefaktien), kuten verkkosivustojen, sovellusten ja käyttöliittymien saavutettavuus tarkoittaa sitä, että ihmiset erilaisine ominaisuuksineen ja kykyineen voivat käyttää niitä. Vaikka saavutettavuus on ihmisoikeus, IT-artefaktit eivät kuitenkaan ole aina saavutettavia. Käytettävissä olevista saavutettavuusohjeista huolimatta tarvitsemme suunnitteluteorioita, jotka ohjaavat IT-artefaktien suunnittelua, jotta niistä tulisi saavutettavia kaikille IT-artefaktin käyttäjille. Tämä väitöskirja on yhteenveto neljästä artikkelista, jotka käsittelevät tätä ongelmaa. Tutkimukset ovat tehty laadullisilla menetelmillä, joihin on sisältynyt narratiivinen kirjallisuuskatsaus, systemaattinen kirjallisuuskatsaus sekä suunnittelutieteellinen menetelmä sisältäen osallistavan suunnittelun ja haastattelut. Ensimmäisessä artikkelissa kehitetään kuvaileva saavutettavuuden teoria, jolla saadaan käsitys saavutettavuuden rakenteesta ja joka näyttää mahdolliset muuttujat ihmisen kyvyissä, tehtävissä ja konteksteissa, sekä niiden väliset suhteet. Toinen artikkeli kuvaa saavutettavuuteen vaikuttavia tekijöitä johtamisen, kehityksen, käyttäjän ja IT-artefaktin ominaisuuksien näkökulmista, mukaan lukien roolit ja toimenpiteet, joita näillä kohteilla on. Kaksi muuta artikkelia kehittävät ohjeistuksen sisällöntuottajien työn tueksi saavutettavan verkkotekstin tuottamiseksi. Väitöskirjassa esitetään kolme ratkaisevaa tekijää saavutettavuuden tietämyksessä: (1) olettamukset käyttäjien kyvyistä (2) käyttäjien todelliset tarpeet ja (3) tekijät kehitysketjussa. Näiden tekijöiden tuntemus auttaa erityisesti suunnittelutieteilijöitä muodostamaan ohjaavaa tietoa ammattilaisille saavutettavien IT-artefaktien saavuttamiseksi. Täten tutkijat voivat paremmin tunnistaa muuttujat, niiden väliset suhteet ja saavutettavuuteen vaikuttavat tekijät, jotka liittyvät käyttäjän kykyihin, johtamiseen, kehittämiseen, sisällöntuottamiseen, tehtäviin ja kontekstiin, kun IT-artefaktia suunnitellaan tiettyä tehtävää ja käyttökontekstia varten.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Inclusive Augmented and Virtual Reality: A Research Agenda

Augmented and virtual reality experiences present significant barriers for disabled people, making it challenging to fully engage with immersive platforms. Whilst researchers have started to explore potential solutions addressing these accessibility issues, we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of research areas requiring further investigation to support the development of inclusive AR/VR systems. To address current gaps in knowledge, we led a series of multidisciplinary sandpits with relevant stakeholders (i.e., academic researchers, industry specialists, people with lived experience of disability, assistive technologists, and representatives from disability organisations, charities, and special needs educational institutions) to collaboratively explore research challenges, opportunities, and solutions. Based on insights shared by participants, we present a research agenda identifying key areas where further work is required in relation to specific forms of disability (i.e., across the spectrum of physical, visual, cognitive, and hearing impairments), including wider considerations associated with the development of more accessible immersive platforms

Making touch-based kiosks accessible to blind users through simple gestures

Touch-based interaction is becoming increasingly popular and is commonly used as the main interaction paradigm for self-service kiosks in public spaces. Touch-based interaction is known to be visually intensive, and current non-haptic touch-display technologies are often criticized as excluding blind users. This study set out to demonstrate that touch-based kiosks can be designed to include blind users without compromising the user experience for non-blind users. Most touch-based kiosks are based on absolute positioned virtual buttons which are difficult to locate without any tactile, audible or visual cues. However, simple stroke gestures rely on relative movements and the user does not need to hit a target at a specific location on the display. In this study, a touch-based train ticket sales kiosk based on simple stroke gestures was developed and tested on a panel of blind and visually impaired users, a panel of blindfolded non-visually impaired users and a control group of non-visually impaired users. The tests demonstrate that all the participants managed to discover, learn and use the touch-based self-service terminal and complete a ticket purchasing task. The majority of the participants completed the task in less than 4 min on the first attempt

Haptic Wave

We present the Haptic Wave, a device that allows cross-modal mapping of digital audio to the haptic domain, intended for use by audio producers/engineers with visual impairments. We describe a series of participatory design activities adapted to non-sighted users where the act of prototyping facilitates dialog. A series of workshops scoping user needs, and testing a technology mock up and lo-fidelity prototype fed into the design of a final high-spec prototype. The Haptic Wave was tested in the laboratory, then deployed in real world settings in recording studios and audio production facilities. The cross-modal mapping is kinesthetic and allows the direct manipulation of sound without the translation of an existing visual interface. The research gleans insight into working with users with visual impairments, and transforms perspective to think of them as experts in non-visual interfaces for all users. This received the Best Paper Award at CHI 2016, the most prestigious human-computer interaction conference and one of the top-ranked conferences in computer science

Choosing to see: designing accessible video games for visually impaired players

As players when thinking of playing video games some memories come to mind, and those images and memories involve people playing around a screen, something very normal when performing such action. But what happens to those that can’t see properly? Or those that can see at all? How can they play? The word video game already includes “video” on it, something that involves the use of the sight. And in their origin video games were something that was created having in mind that the players would be able to use the visual feedback as a way to interact with the game itself. But technology and science have evolved in the last 50 years and nowadays it is possible for a completely blind player to play and finish a 30 h long video game. Of course this is not the case for the great majority of video games. Most video games developed in the last 20 years have little to no accessibility options, and even the ones that are currently released by big companies and studios rarely meet the expectations. Living in the 21st century in an advanced and technologic world where even VR games can be played at home, not having proper Accessibility options for the players seems wrong. As developers Accessibility is something that should be taken into account in each game and project worked on from now on. The objective of this paper is not to expose or criticize video game studios in the industry but quite the opposite. The goal of this paper is to inform and educate others and myself on a topic that must concern every developer and that should be something to take into account from the beginning of the development, how to make a video game more accessible for all players, especially for players with visual disabilitie

Age-related cognitive decline and navigation in electronic environments

The older population is increasing, as is life expectancy. Technical devices are becoming more widespread and used for many everyday tasks. Knowledge about new technology is important to remain as an active and independent part of the society. However, if an old user group should have equal access to this technology, new demands will be placed on the design of interfaces and devices. With respect to old users it is and will be important to develop technical devices and interfaces that take the age-related decline in physical and cognitive abilities into account. The aim of this work was to investigate to what extent the age-related cognitive decline affects performance on different computer-related tasks and the use of different interfaces. With respect to the use of computer interfaces, two studies were conducted. In the first study, the information was presented with a hierarchical structure. In the second study the information was presented as a 3D-environment, and it was also investigated how an overview map could support navigation. The third study examined the age-related cognitive decline in the use of a small mobile phone display with a hierarchical information structure. The results from the studies showed that the most pronounced age-related difference was found in the use of the 3D-environment. Within this environment, prior experience was found to have the largest impact on performance. Regarding the hierarchical information structures, prior experience seemed to have a larger impact on performance of easy tasks, while age and cognitive abilities had a larger impact on performance of more complex tasks. With respect to navigation aids, the overview map in the 3D-environment did not reduce the age-differences; however, it contributed to a better perceived orientation and reduced the feeling of being lost