Writing about accessibility

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. --- Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor </jats:p

Older Adults’ Deployment of ‘Distrust’

Older adults frequently deploy the concept of distrust when discussing digital technologies, and it is tempting to assume that distrust is largely responsible for the reduced uptake by older adults witnessed in the latest surveys of technology use. To help understand the impact of distrust on adoption behavior, we conducted focus groups with older adults exploring how, in what circumstances, and to what effect older adults articulate distrust in digital technologies. Our findings indicate that distrust is not especially relevant to older adults’ practical decision making around technology (non-)use. The older adults in our study used the language of distrust to open up discussions around digital technologies to larger issues related to values. This suggests that looking to distrust as a predictor of non-use (e.g. in Technology Acceptance Model studies) may be uniquely unhelpful in the case of older adults, as it narrows the discussion of technology acceptance and trust to interactional issues, when their use of distrust pertains to much wider concerns. Likewise, technology adoption should not be viewed as indicative of trust or an endorsement of technology acceptability. Older adults using-while-distrusting offers important insights into how to design truly acceptable digital technologies

Scalable Programming for the Analysis of Aphasia Transcripts

Technologies designed for individuals with nonfluent aphasia focus on digitizing speech therapy methods and generating speech. To improve these technologies, the language characteristics of individuals with non- fluent aphasia must be further understood. Language corpuses, such as the AphasiaBank, provide a promising solution for informing technology usability in terms of navigation, interface, and content decisions. As a tool for informing such work, this research investigates the viability of a flexible and scalable multi-threaded software program for the analysis of AphasiaBank transcripts. Results show that the program allows rapid analysis of all transcriptions by optimizing core functionality and minimizing the number of areas for synchronization. This research aims to improve the access to information, products, and services in technology for individuals with non-fluent aphasia

'Just Passing Through':Research in Care Homes

This forum is dedicated to personal health in all its many facets: decision-making, goal setting, celebration, discovery, reflection, and coordination, among others. We look at innovations in interactive technologies and how they help address current critical healthcare challenges. --- Gillian R. Hayes, Editor </jats:p

Age, Technology Usage, and Cognitive Characteristics in Relation to Perceived Disorientation and Reported Website Ease of Use

Comparative studies including older and younger adults are becoming more common in HCI, generally used to compare how these two different age groups will approach a task. However, it is unclear whether user 'age' is the underlying factor that differentiates between these two groups. To address this problem, an examination into the relationship between users' age, previous technology experience, and cognitive characteristics is conducted. Measures of perceived disorientation and reported ease of use are used to understand links that exist between these user characteristics and their effect on browsing experience. This is achieved through a lab-based information retrieval task, where participants visited a selection of websites in order to find answers to a series of questions and then self reported their feelings of perceived disorientation and website ease of use through a Likert-scored questionnaire. The presented research found that age accounts for as little as 1% of user browsing experience when performing information retrieval tasks. Further, it showed that cognitive ability and previous technology experience significantly affected perceived disorientation in these searches. These results argue for the inclusion of metrics regarding cognitive ability and previous technology experience when analyzing user satisfaction and performance in Internet based-studies

Buildings and users with visual impairment::uncovering factors for accessibility using BIT-Kit

In this paper, we report on the experiences of visually impaired users in navigating buildings. We focus on an investigation of the way-finding experiences by 10 participants with varying levels of visual ability, as they undertook a way-finding task in an unfamiliar public building. Through applying the BIT-Kit framework in this preliminary user study, we were able to uncover 54 enabling and disabling interactions within the case study building. While this building adhered to building legislation, our findings identified a number of accessibility problems including, issues associated with using doors, hazards caused by building finishes, and difficulty in knowing what to do in the case of an emergency evacuation. This user study has demonstrated a disparity between design guidance and the accessibility needs of building users. It has uncovered evidence to enable architects to begin to design for the real needs of users who have a range of visual impairment. Furthermore, it has instigated discussion of how BIT-Kit's evidence could be incorporated into digital modelling tools currently used in architectural practice

Ethical Inclusion of People with Disabilities through Undergraduate Computing Education

The percentage of the worldwide population with some form of disability is rising, and computing technologies, if accessible, could facilitate full participation in society for these users. However, the issue of equal access to technology is rarely included in curricula for computing students. While prior educators have implemented specific interventions to train computing degree students about accessibility, there is a need for a systematic comparison of these methods. Thus, we are empirically investigating the efficacy of various educational interventions for training future computing professionals about inclusive technology development. The goal of this work is to provide evidence of best practices and to share resources necessary to replicate our interventions at other universities