Evaluation of the Accessibility of Touchscreens for Individuals who are Blind or have Low Vision: Where to go from here

Touchscreen devices are well integrated into daily life and can be found in both personal and public spaces, but the inclusion of accessible features and interfaces continues to lag behind technology’s exponential advancement. This thesis aims to explore the experiences of individuals who are blind or have low vision (BLV) while interacting with non-tactile touchscreens, such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, coffee machines, smart home devices, kiosks, ATM machines, and more. The goal of this research is to create a set of recommended guidelines that can be used in designing and developing either personal devices or shared public technologies with accessible touchscreens. This study consists of three phases, the first being an exploration of existing research related to accessibility of non-tactile touchscreens, followed by semi-structured interviews of 20 BLV individuals to address accessibility gaps in previous work, and finally a survey in order to get a better understanding of the experiences, thoughts, and barriers for BLV individuals while interacting with touchscreen devices. Some of the common themes found include: loss of independence, lack or uncertainty of accessibility features, and the need and desire for improvements. Common approaches for interaction were: the use of high markings, asking for sighted assistance, and avoiding touchscreen devices. These findings were used to create a set of recommended guidelines which include a universal feature setup, the setup of accessibility settings, universal headphone jack position, tactile feedback, ask for help button, situational lighting, and the consideration of time

Better Outcomes for Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents and Their Families: A Proposed Educational Workshop Series--Families with Young Parents Educational Series (FYPES)

This project presents a curriculum in the form of a workshop series for family life educators who work with pregnant or parenting adolescents and their families. The focus of this workshop series is to give pregnant and parenting adolescents and their families information and practical skills in regards to communication, problem solving, infant care and development, and resource management. it was found that there was little intervention with this focus for this particular population. The workshops were based on the experiential learning guide by Brooks-Harris & Stock-Ward (1999), the working with parents guide by Curran (1989), and the evaluation procedure was based on Fetterman\u27s (2001) empowerment evaluation technique