CMP2019M Human-Computer Interaction
Week 4 – Core Concepts: Accessibility
Last week
• Designing for Human Cognition – Usability
– Design Heuristics • Nielsen
• Shneiderman
This week
A look at more core concepts in HCI:
• Part I: Understanding Human Cognition
• Part II: Designing for Human Cognition
• Part III: Designing for All (this week!) – Accessibility
Part III: Designing for All
Are we all the same?
Look at the people to your right and to your left.
Sometimes, there are barriers because our environment isn’t designed to accommodate our needs.
How many of you can think of a situation where you wanted to do something, but failed because your body wouldn’t let you?
Some of these are little inconveniences (grocery store), but for other people, daily life can be challenging and frustrating.
Accessibility = making products, services, environments etc. accessible to as many people as possible.
Remember: Our body is our interface to communicate with technology.
•
Visual
– Blindness
– Low vision
– Color blindness
• Cognitive disabilities
• Memory loss
• ADD / ADHD • Dyslexia
• Other issues
• Cultural differences
Impairments and Disabilities
• Auditory
– Deafness
– Hard of hearing
• Mobility
– Paralysis
– Neurological disorders
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“Colourblindness”
• Persons with colour vision deficiency (CVD) do not see colour the same way as majority of people, have trouble seeing certain colours, telling them apart.
• Affects 8% of men, 0.5% women
• Onlysmall%actuallycolourblind
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Impact of CVD
• Colour coding of information is an issue – especially in computer systems!
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Impact of CVD
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Designing for CVD
• Being mindful during design process (guidelines, user-centric design,…)
• Alternative: Recolouring tools
– Tools that analyze initial colour set and replace those that may be difficult to see
– Identify one (or more) colours that individual has problems with and replace these with other colours – requires calibration routine!
– Result is functional, but not necessarily pretty
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Designing for CVD
• Problem: Colour has a lot of functions…
• Warm vs. cold colours: Red, brown, blue? • Colourconveysmood!
• Flatla et al.: “Preserving subjective responses”
1) Original 2) CVD view 3) Recoloured (a) 4) Recoloured (b)
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•
Visual
– Blindness
– Low vision
– Color blindness
• Cognitive disabilities
• Memory loss
• ADD / ADHD • Dyslexia
• Other issues
• Cultural differences
Impairments and Disabilities
• Auditory
– Deafness
– Hard of hearing
• Mobility
– Paralysis
– Neurological disorders
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Wait a minute – culture as a disability?
Accessibility is not just about access for persons with disabilities, it’s about all of us.
Can you think of any other situational impairments?
Accessibility, HCI, and Computer Science
Accessibility is (1)
and it is (2)
What are the differences between these approaches?
What perspective do they take?
(1) Making technology (= user interfaces) accessible.
(2) Using technology to make the world accessible.
(1) Making technology (= user interfaces) accessible.
Making Technology Accessible
• Technology and content is getting more complex – think multimedia content, multi-modal interaction, …
• Complexitycreateschallengesandopportunitiesfor accessibility
• If standard user interfaces are not accessible for users, custom hardware and adapted software offer the opportunity of increasing accessibility
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Custom Hardware
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…but their integration requires standards.
Standards
• Expert organisations analyse requirements and come up with lists of features and design guidelines
• These lists can be very long, and are usually dreaded by designers
– W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
– ISO 9241-171: Software Accessibility
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catal ogue_detail.htm?csnumber=39080
– Able Gamers http://www.includification.com/
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W3C Web Access Guidelines
Example: Screen Readers
W3C Web Access Guidelines
W3C Guidelines: Example
W3C Guidelines: Example
Alt text, version 1:
An evil swan has escaped! Beware!
Alt text, version 2:
A swan wandering around Lincoln student accommodations surrounded by police officers.
W3C Web Access Guidelines
ISO 9241-171
Able Gamers Guidelines
What could be difficulties with these approaches?
What are advantages?
Common Approach: Standards
• Ensure basic accessibility – sort of a ‘minimum standards approach’
• Enable people with disabilities to plug in assistive technology – for example, screen readers
• Empower people with disabilities to use preferred modalities to gain access to information
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Making Technology Accessible
• Technology and content is getting more complex – think multimedia content, multi-modal interaction, …
• Complexitycreateschallengesandopportunitiesfor accessibility
• As designers and development, awareness is the most important bit – User-Centred Design can help (more next week)
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(1) Making technology (= user interfaces) accessible.
(2) Using technology to make the world accessible.
(2) Using technology to make the world accessible.
• …?
Accessible Transit
• If you want to take the bus to get out of Lincoln, what do you do?
– Need to double-check timetable?
– Have to wait for a long time? Want to sit down!
– Stopped at Starbucks and want to toss cup? Bin?
– Need to identify correct stop!!!
Accessible Transit
• Hara, K. et al.: Improving Public Transit Accessibility for Blind Riders by Crowdsourcing Bus Stop Landmark Locations with Google Street View. In: Proc. of ASSETS 2014.
• http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2513383.2513448
• Found that people with low or no vision often rely on landmarks for identification.
Accessible Transit
Accessible Transit
Accessible Transit Kotaro’s work
Accessible Home Appliances
• …?
• Home appliances are increasingly using LCD displays instead of knobs etc. – no tactile feedback!
Accessible Home Appliances
• Fusco, G., Tekin, E., Ladner, R.E., Coughlan, J.M.
Using Computer Vision to Access Appliance Displays. Proceedings of ASSETS 2014, ACM (2014).
• http://www.ski.org/Rehab/Coughlan_lab/DisplayRead er/
• http://www.ski.org/Rehab/Coughlan_lab/General/Pub lications/Appliance%20Displays%20- %20ASSETS%202014.pdf
Accessible Home Appliances
• Users take picture with smartphone
• Computervisionalgorithmsareappliedtoanalyze information and give verbal feedback
• ARtagtogivesmart- phone app info on display
• Also guides picture taking
Technology can help with a lot of accessibility challenges.
But some stuff needs to be done by humans?!
Accessible Fashion
• …?
• Think about accessibility of fashion and visual impairment. What problems would you imagine? How would you make fashion choices?
• (This is not just about being fashionable, but also about making appropriate choices. Think job interview.)
Accessible Fashion
• Information that people would like to have:
Accessible Fashion
• Burton, Brady, Brewer, Neylan, Bigham, and Hurst:
Crowdsourcing Subjective Fashion Advice Using VizWiz: Challenges and Opportunities. Proceedings of ASSETS 2012, ACM (2012).
• http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2384941
Accessible Fashion
Accessible Fashion
Accessible Fashion
• Can you think of any challenges?
• Trust
• Personalpreference
• Timeliness of feedback (rushed in the morning, only five minutes left, and nobody is online)
• Unintentional mistakes of volunteers (e.g., bad image quality, unclear questions)
• Takingpictures!!
Robotic Shopping Cart
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/05/newest-kinect-hack-a- grocery-cart-that-loyally-follows-disabled/
Main Challenges
• System stability, reliability – think false-positives vs. false-negatives in critical environments,
• Trust – are users willing to rely on these technologies? Crucial when it comes to adoption!
• Implications for you as a designer or developer? What you do matters way more than if you’re working in other fields of comp sci, lots of responsibility!
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Working in accessibility can mean many things, ranging from standards and paperwork to creative research.
There is a place for all of these aspects – if you are a designer and you don’t know where to start, guidelines may be boring, but are a great info source.
Designing Accessible Systems
• This starts with the initial idea for your system
• Think about potential user groups (Step 1)
– Who do you envision would use your system?
– Go through list of disabilities and other factors that might hinder access. Try to identify core problems.
– Go back and see if your target audience would be affected (this is a tricky one!)
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Designing Accessible Systems
• Research strategies to design accessibility (Step 2)
– Existing standards are a good starting point. Do they transfer to your problem? How can they be mapped?
– Look at resources that end user organizations offer. Often they provide some insights into daily challenges, and needs.
• Problem:“Problem-centric”perspective.Focuseson what users can’t do / would struggle with, not what they would like / are good at.
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Designing Accessible Systems
• Solution: User involvement in design process
– Unique perspective
– Cannot be reflected by standards documents, experience reports etc.
– Focus on ABILITIES
– But: Takes time. May be difficult to recruit. Additional cost. Sometimes: Vulnerability.
– To give you first impression, YouTube can be an interesting starting point!
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The bottom line:
Think about your target audience and their abilities.
There’ll be more on user- centric design next week.
Do you have any questions?