David Cowsert, Utah State University, “Internet Usage by Users with Significant Visual Impairment”

Jeffrey A. Bacha, University of Alabama at Birmingham, “Usability ‘Testing’ vs Usability ‘Studies:’ From Testing ‘Use’ to Sustainable Development Practices”

6 Attendees

BACHA

Introduces key terms that he's focused on and are important to consider/discuss: usable; usability; participatory design; end-user development; user-centered.

He likes working and exploring these terms. One example of where he explored these terms was a work-place situation--a pub--and how usability problems (issues with the register/monitor) impact customer service. In short, a pub got busy, the machine slowed down, and customers left upset with the bad service. His emphasis was on tracking use in context.

References Johnson, Kuniavsky,  and Salvo (among others).

Lists environmental factors impacting use: workplace disruptions; workplace lcoation; physical technology. Discusses how to theorize the working enviornment/context. Discusses design-based researchers (Wang and Hannfin) as one potential approach to understand workplace environment. Mentions software development processes as another approach.

It turns out the usability problem was sourced in a manager changing the menu or monitor and not telling the employee so the employee had to search out solutions.

Bacha presents a model of iterative design to test out different models in work places. He indicates that out of context testing would be skewed when compared to the workplace environment where pressure is high and the stress is real. In other words, when an average or normal pace is present, you may not see the errors that are revealed when pressure or pace increase.

COWSERT

Defines key terms: significant visual impairment.

Notes that content developed for people with dis/abilities was often regarded as supplemental, extra, and had negative connotations (more work or having to make it just for a small group of users). This shows limited awareness and understanding of users.

Explored multiple guidelines (508; W3C, etc.), but existing standards do not allow for prediction.

Takeaway: Current accessibility principles are incomplete in predicting how individuals are going to use the Internet.

Current emphases on accessible content development:
1. Ease of Use
2. Maximizing content reception
Often this is defined as effective user experience which is often conflated with good user experience and eventually happy users. This does not acknowledge or address our range of emotions and responses.

His participants accepted large levels of frustration and other "negative" emotions in order to achieve their goal. The long-term rewards--more than just ease of use--motivated them to work through the frustration.

He cites respondent: They will go to a mainstream version of a site, not a parallel version of a site, because they don't want to miss out on information or be left out.

Asserts that content creators often see the end user as solo or alone when they are looking at the content while the end users are looking at the websites socially to see how much authority, rank, or value the site has. End users indicated that they'd rather struggle to work with a site that they trusted or made them feel good; on the other hand, they would not go back to a site if they did not trust it even if that site was very accessible and usable.

Indicates that even surveys are defining the context too narrowly by focusing on ease of use and maximizing experience/content reception.

We should stop identifying users, and creating content, based on the disability or label that is associated with weakness. Study participants felt that the material is targeted towards them because of a perceived weakness or sense of weakness.

What were your takeaways from the session?

Do you think any of the presentations should be turned into an article?