Exploring Accessibility Features and Plug-ins for Digital Prototyping Tools

Many digital systems are found to be inaccessible and a large part of the issue is that accessibility is not considered early enough in the design process. Digital prototyping tools are a powerful resource for designers to quickly explore both low and high fidelity design mockups during initial stages of product design and development. We evaluated 10 popular prototyping tools to understand their built-in and third-party accessibility features. We found that accessible design support is largely from third-party plug-ins rather than prototyping tools\u27 built-in features, and the availability of accessibility support varies from tool to tool. There is potential to improve accessible design by increasing the potential for accessibility to be consider earlier in the design process

Application of universal design principles in the creation of websites oriented toward visually impaired persons

The subject of this study is to show the impact that applying universal design principles has on everyday work with web content for people with visual impairments. The first part of the study is an experiment using an eye tracker, comparing the effects of using high contrast or changing the font size on the subjects' efficiency in performing simple tasks. The second part of the study is a survey comparing the feelings of using a website strictly compliant with universal design principles and its counterpart containing noticeable errors. The eye tracking results were analyzed to assess time to first fixation, average fixation time, and time spent on a designated area of interest. The results indicate an increase in efficiency and comfort with digital content designed according to universal design principles

Developing and Implementing an Accessible, Touch-based Web App for Inclusive Learning

With the prevalence of mobile devices and platforms used throughout the world and the increasing number of organizations with mobile versions of their web sites, it is essential that those applications and sites are accessible, usable and flexible. This project involved the inclusive development and iterative evaluation of a platform-independent, web-based learning app. Usability testing with students, faculty, and individuals with disabilities were combined with manual accessibility evaluations to ensure that a wide range of users and devices would be able to benefit from the structure of such an application. The results of this project detail the process of creating a flexible, platform-independent mobile learning app as well as some of the broader benefits that can result from accessibility and usability improvements to a mobile application. The resulting prototype has been implemented in a “live” environment at a non-profit organization that serves individuals with disabilities

Interface design guidelines for visually impaired learning management systems users

Esta pesquisa descreve o processo de elaboração de um conjunto de 23 diretrizes para design de interfaces de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem, voltadas aos estudantes com baixa visão. As diretrizes foram elaboradas de forma colaborativa e centrada no usuário, contando com a colaboração de 12 estudantes com baixa visão (de níveis diversos), 3 especialistas em acessibilidade e 5 desenvolvedores e designers de web sites. A partir do levantamento de necessidades dos estudantes, os especialistas em acessibilidade geraram um protocolo de navegação para os estudantes com baixa visão, o que permitiu identificar suas dificuldades. A partir disso, o conjunto de diretrizes foi sucessivamente refinado de forma colaborativa entre os especialistas em acessibilidade e os designers e programadores, resultando num conjunto que é apresentado ao final deste artigo. Ainda que a maioria das diretrizes listadas nesta pesquisa não representem novidade em termos de design de interfaces, o fato de elas terem sido agrupadas em torno das necessidades dos usuários com baixa visão representa um avanço, pois facilita o uso destas diretrizes por desenvolvedores que não são especialistas no assunto.This paper describes the process of elaborating a set of 23 guidelines for the design of LMS interfaces, aimed at students with visual impairment. The guidelines were developed in a collaborative and user-centered manner, with the collaboration of 12 students with visual impairment (of different levels), 3 specialists in accessibility and 5 web developers and designers. From the survey of students’ needs, the accessibility specialists generated a navigation protocol for students with low vision, which allowed them to identify their difficulties. From this, the set of guidelines was successively refined in a collaborative manner between accessibility specialists and designers and programmers, resulting in the set presented at the end of this paper. Although most of the guidelines listed in this research are not new in terms of interface design, the fact that they have been grouped around the needs of users with visual impairment is an advance, as it facilitates the use of these guidelines by developers who are not subject matter experts

"Hey, Can You Add Captions?": The Critical Infrastructuring Practices of Neurodiverse People on TikTok

Accessibility efforts, how we can make the world usable and useful to as many people as possible, have explicitly focused on how we can support and allow for the autonomy and independence of people with disabilities, neurotypes, chronic conditions, and older adults. Despite these efforts, not all technology is designed or implemented to support everyone's needs. Recently, a community-organized push by creators and general users of TikTok urged the platform to add accessibility features, such as closed captioning to user-generated content, allowing more people to use the platform with greater ease. Our work focuses on an understudied population -- people with ADHD and those who experience similar challenges -- exploring the creative practices people from this community engage in, focusing on the kinds of accessibility they create through their creative work. Through an interview study exploring the experiences of creatives on TikTok, we find that creatives engage in critical infrastructuring -- a process of bottom-up (re)design -- to make the platform more accessible despite the challenges the platform presents to them as creators. We present these critical infrastructuring practices through the themes of: creating and augmenting video editing infrastructures and creating and augmenting video captioning infrastructures. We reflect on the introduction of a top-down infrastructure - the implementation of an auto-captioning feature - shifts the critical infrastructure practices of content creators. Through their infrastructuring, creatives revised sociotechnical capabilities of TikTok to support their own needs as well as the broader needs of the TikTok community. We discuss how the routine of infrastructuring accessibility is actually best conceptualized as incidental care work. We further highlight how accessibility is an evolving sociotechnical construct, and forward the concept of contextual accessibility.Comment: To be published in: Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. CSCW '2

Web accessibility and mental disorders

Background: Mental disorders are a significant public health issue due to the restrictions they place on participation in all areas of life and the resulting disruption to the families and societies of those affected. People with these disorders often use the Web as an informational resource, platform for convenient self-directed treatment and a means for many other kinds of support. However, some features of the Web can potentially erect barriers for this group that limit their access to these benefits, and there is a lack of research looking into this eventuality. Therefore, it is important to identify gaps in knowledge about “what” barriers exist and “how” they could be addressed so that this knowledge can inform Web professionals who aim to ensure the Web is inclusive to this population. Objective: The objective of this work was to identify the barriers people with mental disorders, especially those with depression and anxiety, experience when using the Web and the facilitation measures used to address such barriers. Methods: This work involved three studies. First, (1) a systematic review of studies that have considered the difficulties people with mental disorders experience when using digital technologies. A synthesis was performed by categorizing data according to the 4 foundational principles of Web accessibility as proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium. Facilitation measures recommended by studies were later summarized into a set of minimal recommendations. This work also relied data triangulation using (2) face-to-face semistructured interview study with participants affected by depression and anxiety and a comparison group, as well as (3) a persona-based expert online survey study with mental health practitioners. Framework analysis was used for study 2 and study 3. Results: A total of 16 publications were included in study 1’s review, comprising 13 studies and 3 international guidelines. Findings suggest that people with mental disorders experience barriers that limit how they perceive, understand, and operate websites. Identified facilitation measures target these barriers in addition to ensuring that Web content can be reliably interpreted by a wide range of user applications. In study 2, 167 difficulties were identified from the experiences of participants in the depression and anxiety group were discussed within the context of 81 Web activities, services, and features. Sixteen difficulties identified from the experiences of participants in the comparison group were discussed within the context of 11 Web activities, services, and features. In study 3, researchers identified 3 themes and 10 subthemes that described the likely difficulties people with depression and anxiety might experience online as reported by mental health practitioners. Conclusions: People with mental disorders encounter barriers on the Web, and attempts have been made to remove or reduce these barriers. This investigation has contributed to a fuller understanding of these difficulties and provides innovative guidance on how to remove and reduce them for people with depression and anxiety when using the Web. More rigorous research is still needed to be exhaustive and to have a larger impact on improving the Web for people with mental disorders

Web accessibility and mental disorders

Background: Mental disorders are a significant public health issue due to the restrictions they place on participation in all areas of life and the resulting disruption to the families and societies of those affected. People with these disorders often use the Web as an informational resource, platform for convenient self-directed treatment and a means for many other kinds of support. However, some features of the Web can potentially erect barriers for this group that limit their access to these benefits, and there is a lack of research looking into this eventuality. Therefore, it is important to identify gaps in knowledge about “what” barriers exist and “how” they could be addressed so that this knowledge can inform Web professionals who aim to ensure the Web is inclusive to this population. Objective: The objective of this work was to identify the barriers people with mental disorders, especially those with depression and anxiety, experience when using the Web and the facilitation measures used to address such barriers. Methods: This work involved three studies. First, (1) a systematic review of studies that have considered the difficulties people with mental disorders experience when using digital technologies. A synthesis was performed by categorizing data according to the 4 foundational principles of Web accessibility as proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium. Facilitation measures recommended by studies were later summarized into a set of minimal recommendations. This work also relied data triangulation using (2) face-to-face semistructured interview study with participants affected by depression and anxiety and a comparison group, as well as (3) a persona-based expert online survey study with mental health practitioners. Framework analysis was used for study 2 and study 3. Results: A total of 16 publications were included in study 1’s review, comprising 13 studies and 3 international guidelines. Findings suggest that people with mental disorders experience barriers that limit how they perceive, understand, and operate websites. Identified facilitation measures target these barriers in addition to ensuring that Web content can be reliably interpreted by a wide range of user applications. In study 2, 167 difficulties were identified from the experiences of participants in the depression and anxiety group were discussed within the context of 81 Web activities, services, and features. Sixteen difficulties identified from the experiences of participants in the comparison group were discussed within the context of 11 Web activities, services, and features. In study 3, researchers identified 3 themes and 10 subthemes that described the likely difficulties people with depression and anxiety might experience online as reported by mental health practitioners. Conclusions: People with mental disorders encounter barriers on the Web, and attempts have been made to remove or reduce these barriers. This investigation has contributed to a fuller understanding of these difficulties and provides innovative guidance on how to remove and reduce them for people with depression and anxiety when using the Web. More rigorous research is still needed to be exhaustive and to have a larger impact on improving the Web for people with mental disorders

Web Content Management System and accessibility awareness: A comparative study of novice users and accessibility outcomes

Since its creation, the Web has progressively developed and become a vital source of information in every domain and for almost all people. It is crucial to guarantee that the information contained on the Web is available for everyone, especially for people with special needs. Removing accessibility barriers is fundamentally based on tools, skills and support of all contributors, particularly the content creators, to ensure information is navigable and usable in the context of the end users experience. Web Content Management Systems play a significant role in structuring, storing and provision content to the Web and have evolved to address the difficulties of manually coding web pages versus the convenience of manipulating their content without any programing skills. Web Content Management Systems have gradually evolved to contain features and functions that allow content authors to shape their content in ways that address web content accessibility expectations, though only if the content author knows how to use these features to maximum effect. This thesis explores such usage by participants deemed to be novices, in that they have limited technical skills in the context of web coding and have limited expose to Web Content Management Systems or the application/awareness of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This research places an emphasis on the outcome of these novice users when provided with some basic training and awareness raising of WCAG principles and the use of a modern Web Content Management System. This is explored in the literature as an area of some importance as organisations with significant web presence cannot simply tell their content authors to ‘oh, and make sure it is accessible’ and hope that the end product will somehow achieve that goal without an investment in some form of accessibility education. For web managers and developers in all public sector organisations. “Make sure that all content commissioners and authors are fully trained in the importance of accessible content, and in the means that are made available for them to achieve this . (p. 58) The purpose of this research was to explore to what level the use of accessible Web Content Management System and novice users’ training impacted accessibility outcomes. This study emerged from the widespread role that Web Content Management Systems play in terms of storing and managing web content and the growing usage of these systems by experts or novices at an organisational or personal level. Through a selection process, this study identified a Web Content Management System that had a number of accessibility features, developed some training and ‘awareness raising’ materials and then asked novice users across two groups to apply what they had learned in order to develop an accessible website. The goal of the study was to ascertain if the two groups performed differently according to the training and awareness raising materials they received, and if even basic accessibility outcomes were achievable with just a few hours of training and from what was essentially an accessibility ‘cold start’. The study used a mixed methods approach encompassing three research methods; experimental method, survey method and observational method, to compare qualitative and quantitative data obtained from ‘accessibility awareness’ and ‘accessibility unaware’ participant groups. Thirty university students participated in this research and received accessibility awareness raising sessions, with additional accessibility-related examples for the accessibility awareness group. All participants undertook pre and post-tests that were designed to collect data allowing the researcher to compare the learning performance before and after the participants’ awareness session. At the end of the awareness session, the participants of both groups completed a survey which was designed to provide further data on the participant’s perception of web use and experience, the concept of web accessibility, web content accessibility guidelines, the system used, and their opinion of the accessibility awareness session. Data collected from the survey, pre and post-tests and the recording provided a holistic set of data from which the primary and supporting research questions were addressed. The results of the research indicated that the accessibility awareness group demonstrated measurably better accessibility outcomes than the unawareness group; these results being attributed to the awareness training session, participants’ searching behaviour, time spent on tasks, and effort made to implement accessible features and complete the required tasks. The participants in both groups had some prior knowledge in the use of the Web but limited or no skills in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) or the use of a Web Content Management System. While performing tasks, the participants in the awareness group attempted to apply the accessibility concepts learnt during the training session and spent more time in searching those concepts on the Web in order to provide accessible web page content. Conversely, most of the participants in the unawareness group were concerned by the “look” of the web page, rather than focusing on actual accessible content; they only mimicked the exemplar website they have been provided as an ‘end product’, but did not explore the how and why of accessible content. All the participants at the end of this study were aware of the significance of web accessibility and were favourable to consider it in any future website development they may be involved in. The outcome of the study shows that the use of accessible Web Content Management System with example-based accessibility awareness sessions can lead to improved accessibility outcomes for novice web content authors. This research strongly suggests that even small, focussed and example-based training/awareness raising session can drive an accessibility mindset in web content authors, even those with limited or no technical, accessibility or web authoring experience