Interaction Strategies of Blind Web Users – A Qualitative Study

Blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals face significant accessibility problems while interacting with the web. BVI individuals engage in non-visual interactions with the web using screen readers. Accessibility problems hinder user interactions and generate frustration. Current approaches to solve those problems are predominantly techno-centric and tend to improve the screen reading capabilities. They, however, overlook the role of BVI individual\u27s interaction strategies. We define the “interaction strategy” as a coordinated sequence of user interactions with online resources that is intended to achieve an interaction goal. Interaction strategy is a larger term which includes browsing as well as coping strategies used in web-interactions. We collect qualitative observations of five BVI users’ web-interactions. Using the inductive analysis, we produce a web-interaction strategy framework

Understanding the interaction strategies of blind health IT users: a qualitative study

Blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals face significant accessibility and usability problems while interacting with web and mobile applications. Current approaches to resolve those problems are overly techno-centric and ignore the role of BVI users in determining the success or failure of an interaction. Using the “Theory of Affordances” as a theoretical lens, this research includes the users in the equation. This research argues that the interaction strategies of BVI users play a vital role in determining the success or failure of their web and mobile interactions. Extant Information Systems literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of the BVI users’ interaction strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to produce a comprehensive understanding of the BVI web and mobile users’ interaction strategies, respective accessibility, and usability problems, and use that knowledge to resolve the identified problems. This research is situated in the context of BVI users’ personal health information management using web and mobile applications. The research adopts a novel semiethnographic, conversation-style qualitative data collection methodology. The research design is an observation study with BVI web and mobile users. The research produces the comprehensive understanding of the web and mobile interaction strategies of BVI participants, and the respective accessibility and usability problems. The identified Web interaction strategies are: *Use of screen-reader specific navigation functions, *Use of links list, *Use the up and down arrow keys, *Use the “table layer”, *Using arrow keys, *Use of the tab key, *Use of the screen-find function, *Hit the enter key, *Hit the spacebar, *Tab and shift + tab in succession, *Up and down arrow keys in succession, *Use screen-reader function such as insert + tab in JAWS, *Re-doing the component-level operation, *Restarting the browser and re-doing the entire task-flow, *Trial and error, The identified mobile interaction strategies are: *Sequential scanning, *Gambling scanning, *Direct-touch scanning, *Read character-by-character, *Read word-by-word, *Read line-by-line, *Skim through headings, *Flick left and flick right in succession, *Flick left and flick right in succession, *Use of handwriting, *Use of braille screen input, *Use of direct-touch typing, *Use the dictation feature, *Use of an external keyboard, *Use of standard typing, *Use of touch typing, *Re-doing the component-level operation, *Moving one step back and re-tracing the path, *Restarting the application and re-doing the entire task-flow, *Trial and error. The web interaction strategies are very similar to the mobile interaction strategies. The participants often develop multiple strategies to achieve their objectives and then choose to execute one or more of the strategies considering various contextual factors. The strategies can be broadly classified as exploration or exploitation. The strategies in the exploration category intend to gather the information about the interface. The strategies in the exploitation category intend to use the properties of the interface without exploring the interface. This research makes the following contributions: *Defines the construct “interaction strategy” as a coordinated sequence of user interactions with online resources that is intended to achieve an interaction goal. It allows us to study the entire interaction as a single unit. *Develops a semi-ethnographic, conversation-style qualitative data-collection methodology to study human technology interactions. It implements the methodology to study the BVI users’ web and mobile interactions using a screen-reader. * Develops the theoretical analysis methodology to identify the areas of improvement in human technology interactions. *Generates the design and interaction principles to resolve the identified accessibility and usability problems

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

The assessment of usability of electronic shopping: A heuristic evaluation

Today there are thousands of electronic shops accessible via the Web. Some provide user-friendly features whilst others seem not to consider usability factors at all. Yet, it is critical that the electronic shopping interface is user-friendly so as to help users to obtain their desired results. This study applied heuristic evaluation to examine the usability of current electronic shopping. In particular, it focused on four UK-based supermarkets offering electronic services: including ASDA, Iceland, Sainsbury, and Tesco. The evaluation consists of two stages: a free-flow inspection and a task-based inspection. The results indicate that the most significant and common usability problems have been found to lie within the areas of ‘User Control and Freedom’ and ‘Help and Documentation’. The findings of this study are applied to develop a set of usability guidelines to support the future design of effective interfaces for electronic shopping

Understanding user experience of mobile video: Framework, measurement, and optimization

Since users have become the focus of product/service design in last decade, the term User eXperience (UX) has been frequently used in the field of Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). Research on UX facilitates a better understanding of the various aspects of the user’s interaction with the product or service. Mobile video, as a new and promising service and research field, has attracted great attention. Due to the significance of UX in the success of mobile video (Jordan, 2002), many researchers have centered on this area, examining users’ expectations, motivations, requirements, and usage context. As a result, many influencing factors have been explored (Buchinger, Kriglstein, Brandt & Hlavacs, 2011; Buchinger, Kriglstein & Hlavacs, 2009). However, a general framework for specific mobile video service is lacking for structuring such a great number of factors. To measure user experience of multimedia services such as mobile video, quality of experience (QoE) has recently become a prominent concept. In contrast to the traditionally used concept quality of service (QoS), QoE not only involves objectively measuring the delivered service but also takes into account user’s needs and desires when using the service, emphasizing the user’s overall acceptability on the service. Many QoE metrics are able to estimate the user perceived quality or acceptability of mobile video, but may be not enough accurate for the overall UX prediction due to the complexity of UX. Only a few frameworks of QoE have addressed more aspects of UX for mobile multimedia applications but need be transformed into practical measures. The challenge of optimizing UX remains adaptations to the resource constrains (e.g., network conditions, mobile device capabilities, and heterogeneous usage contexts) as well as meeting complicated user requirements (e.g., usage purposes and personal preferences). In this chapter, we investigate the existing important UX frameworks, compare their similarities and discuss some important features that fit in the mobile video service. Based on the previous research, we propose a simple UX framework for mobile video application by mapping a variety of influencing factors of UX upon a typical mobile video delivery system. Each component and its factors are explored with comprehensive literature reviews. The proposed framework may benefit in user-centred design of mobile video through taking a complete consideration of UX influences and in improvement of mobile videoservice quality by adjusting the values of certain factors to produce a positive user experience. It may also facilitate relative research in the way of locating important issues to study, clarifying research scopes, and setting up proper study procedures. We then review a great deal of research on UX measurement, including QoE metrics and QoE frameworks of mobile multimedia. Finally, we discuss how to achieve an optimal quality of user experience by focusing on the issues of various aspects of UX of mobile video. In the conclusion, we suggest some open issues for future study

Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the current methods of accessing them are highly visually mediated. Representing data using audio feedback is a common method of making data more accessible, but methods of navigating and accessing the data are often serial in nature and laborious. Tactile or haptic displays could be used to provide additional feedback to support a point-and-click type interaction for the visually impaired. A requirements capture conducted with sight impaired computer users produced a review of current accessibility technologies, and guidelines were extracted for using tactile feedback to aid navigation. The results of a qualitative evaluation with a prototype interface are also presented. Providing an absolute position input device and tactile feedback allowed the users to explore the graph using tactile and proprioceptive cues in a manner analogous to point-and-click techniques

Understanding the information experiences of parents involved in negotiating post-separation parenting arrangements

The paper presents findings from a study into the information experiences of people needing to make post-separation parenting arrangements. Data was collected from 20 participants, through in-depth, semi-structured, telephone interviews. Thematic analysis identified five major themes: Following, Immersion, Interpersonal, History and Context which depict the information experiences of the participants. The findings can be used as an evidence base to inform the design and delivery of support and services provided by government agencies and other community groups supporting the legal information needs of individuals and families. The work extends current understandings of information experience as an object of study in the information science discipline

Surveying Persons with Disabilities: A Source Guide (Version 1)

As a collaborator with the Cornell Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. has been working on a project that identifies the strengths and limitations in existing disability data collection in both content and data collection methodology. The intended outcomes of this project include expanding and synthesizing knowledge of best practices and the extent existing data use those practices, informing the development of data enhancement options, and contributing to a more informed use of existing data. In an effort to provide the public with an up-to-date and easily accessible source of research on the methodological issues associated with surveying persons with disabilities, MPR has prepared a Source Guide of material related to this topic. The Source Guide contains 150 abstracts, summaries, and references, followed by a Subject Index, which cross references the sources from the Reference List under various subjects. The Source Guide is viewed as a “living document,” and will be periodically updated