>> Sharron Rush: Welcome to our.
Our discussion of usability. How to integrate people with disabilities into your user studies. We're, Jane and I are very excited to present this one to you because we believe that this is a really critical part.
Of reaching accessibility goals. So I'm Sharron Rush. I'm the executive director and co-founder of Knowbility.
And presenting with me today is my friend and colleague Jane Schurick. And we have a special guest appearance from Sheri Robinson who's one of our AIR participants and She's going to help us with a demonstration of.
Her assistive technology when we get to that part. So am I able to move the slides? Do I just?
Jane Schurick: No, I think I'm gonna move the slides.
Sharron Rush: No, I'm not. Okay, so that's Jane. That's my friend Jane.
She's the one who really knows what she's doing around user research because Jane has been a usability.
Engineer and researcher and has led our accessibility. User testing effort here at Knowbility for more than 10 years.
And we, we really appreciate her attention to all the, details of this. And her great expertise.
So I'm I'm gonna do some introductory. Oh, just, just to make sure that we all have a, I think some of this that I'm going to talk about will be a review for most everyone.
But. We just want to be sure that we're all thinking and using the same terms in the same way.
So, with that, we'll get started. On the fundamentals of disability and accessibility.
We tend to define accessibility. I think you'll find there are many people who talk about accessibility in terms of conformance to this.
Standard or that standard. There's Canadian standards, European standards, Japanese standards, most of them are based on The, the standards at the W 3 C's.
Web accessibility initiative. And It's it is based on these 4 principles. Of what makes something accessible.
And you'll find that the user is very much in the center of those principles. So those principles are that content will be.
Perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. And the acronym you'll see used on that a lot is poor.
So the poor principles of perceivable mean that a user, whether the user is sighted, unsighted, if they're hearing, non hearing.
Yeah.
That users are aware of all the content. They're able to. To understand that it's there.
Operable that users can navigate and interact with interfaces and content. Understandable means that design and content are intuitive.
And can be understood. By a wide spectrum of users. And then finally there's robust, which talks about really that.
That content is interoperable and that you can you can reach it and use it and move among it.
From different kinds of devices or interfaces, browsers, user agents like assistive technology. And you'll often also see the acronym A 1 one Y.
And the reason that they do that is because the word accessibility is a very long word. You've got an A at the first, 11 letters in between and a Y.
So you've got A one, Y. That stands for accessibility.
The poor principals come from a resource at the W threec that we call we abbreviate as WCAG, which stands for web, content accessibility guidelines.
And along with those guidelines that they developed through a consensus process. They have a lot of supporting documents and it really is great to go.
Knock around on that Way website. To and to think about things like, okay, so accessibility, is it a regulatory requirement?
Is it supported by legal statute or is it just good design? And at Knowbility, we recognize and value the legal requirements and the regulatory.
Infrastructure that supports them. But really, we come back to the fact that good design really is the most important because you can meet all the laws.
And still make an interface that's difficult for many people, including people with disabilities to interact with.
So listing. Listed here are some great. For learning about the regulations and the practices. There's the, law and policy page on the W 3 C site.
And the URL is there WW. W dot W 3.org slash WAI slash policies.
Lainey Feingold has a site you can find lf legal.com. And, her side is very easily searchable.
And if you just look for law and legal updates, she'll get more information. And then of course there's always section 508 of the rehabilitation act.
At any standard search will find. This section. 508.gov. Slash manage slash laws dash and dash policies.
So those are all really great resources. And I think Mark's putting them in the chat. As we speak.
And next, we talk about how we define disability. We tend to see it used as an umbrella term.
And it covers not only these sensory impairments that we're most familiar with. But also any activity limitation that might be caused by.
Temporary disability or injury. Or any participation restriction.
Jane. Thank you. I wish I could do this myself, but I appreciate that you're doing it for me.
Categories of human ability tend to fall under these. Categories of physical sensory or cognitive.
I, we have a friend. Please unfortunately passed away. His name's Jim Caldwell and he was the chairman of the Governor's Committee for People with Disabilities.
He was a Navy officer who was injured and became dis, disabled because of his injury. He became blind and had to use a wheelchair for mobility and he but he was a wise cracking really great funny optimistic fella and he would say you know with all this talk of civil rights we forget that people with disabilities are the largest minority group in the country.
And that they're different from other minority groups because Anyone can join at any time. You can be like he was injured.
And your minority status disappears. When your disability is a accommodated and Judy human used to say that too those of you who know who Judy human is.
She, she was a early. Advocate for section 5, 8 and then. The ADA and she's often cited as one of the really founding members of the ADA.
She was a wonderful, wonderful woman. She also recently passed away. But Jim used to say if people with disabilities can do what they want to do and what they need to do with the help of assistive technology or modification, then they are no longer disabled.
And Judy Human would insist on the word disabled because she said, I am a disabled person. And I am disabled by an environment that does not accommodate my needs.
She was a post polio wheelchair user. Next please.
Jane Schurick: Hold on.
Sharron Rush: Hmm.
And then there are also the invisible. Disabilities. So, you know, you just saw a picture of Jim Caldwell in a wheelchair.
You can see the disability, Judy, human the same. She uses a wheelchair. Often people have canes or dogs that indicate their disability, but then there are many, many disabilities.
That you can't see. Some of those are cognitive. You don't you don't see that when you when you see a person cognitive disabilities learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities, many conditions.
Deficiencies, there are many, many that you won't see and yet We have to think about the accommodating that human experience as well.
Next. And the way that we address a lot of disabilities is through this. This a combination we call assistive technology, which is any item.
Or piece of equipment or product system. Whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of a person with a disability.
Okay.
And that's straight out of section 508. And essentially it means that's anything a person needs in order to overcome the effects of a disability.
I had a friend who would say Well, I have, you know, I have covers in my kitchen that are very high.
So I use I use a step ladder for my assistive technology. Assistive technologies are often used.
Bye, people with and without disabilities. But when you have a disability, your assistive technology can become actually a lifeline.
And that's one of the things we're going to look at as we look at user studies is to say how what's the role of these assistive technologies when we're doing user studies.
Then there are of course also situations where people have more than one disability. So the cross disciplinary or.
Just disability issues or people and the examples on this slide are I'm blind and I have a learning disability.
I'm a wheelchair user and I have autism. I'm physically disabled and I'm gifted and there can be many other combinations.
The example on the next slide is one of Stephen J. Hawking who of course was brilliant.
And his body. Was disabled so that he didn't speak without an assistive communicative device and he didn't walk and Relied on a wheelchair and, but cognitively he was quite gifted.
This I think it was our colleague Jan Mcsorley who found this. This example. And for those of you who don't see the slide, this is the goofiest thing.
Of it's a Just a couple of stairs going up to a door that opens to the outside.
The wheelchair ramp is put far to the left. And the door opens out and as the door opens it completely blocks the wheelchair ramp.
So a person in a wheelchair could open the door, but they'd knock their wheelchair off the ramp.
It's a ridiculous picture and it just kind of illustrates this idea that often where we don't think through.
What we think we know about disabilities. And there are these different models like the medical model says, oh, a disability is something that's wrong with you.
Tragedy or charity model if you think about you know Jerry's kids oh help this poor tragic child with a disability.
But then there's a social model that says, well, the, again, like, Jim Caldwell said, or like Judy Humans said, The disability comes from not accommodating my needs as a human.
I need certain things like I need a wheelchair ramp that doesn't that the door doesn't open in the middle of to get up if you're going to put stairs there, I need a wheelchair ramp that actually works.
And mostly I think lately, maybe, maybe in the past, but I've only recently become aware of this social identity model.
Where so it used to be that we were instructed to say. Person with a disability, people first. But there's more pride around the fact that I'm a disabled person.
And I am disabled maybe by the environment around me but I have pride in my role as a disabled person because I understand that it has made me adaptive and innovative and creative and meeting life's challenges with these.
Kind of innovative strategies. And so there is more along the lines of. It is, it is part of who I am.
And we had a board member who lost his vision when he was about 55 years old. Due to a stroke in his optic nerve and he He was really seriously depressed for a couple of years and then he gradually began to figure out how to use assistive technologies.
He learned more about the community of people with disabilities and he actually so this was like 2,002 or 2 that 1,003 he ended up being featured on the TV show that Oprah at that time had every day and he was he was featured I forget what it was like free your spirit was the thing or something like that.
But, but John Carmain was on there and the last thing he said in his in his interview with Oprah was if I could go back to the person I was before this happened to me I would choose not to do it.
Because of the person it has made me. And I like who I am now. And I think that is the case with this idea that we have a social identity model too.
And that's something that you think about when you're doing user studies. Of what is your approach.
How are you framing the whole issue of disabilities when you're doing your study? Next, please.
People with disabilities share goal skills and human experience with everyone. They are the original life hackers and that was something that was said by another one of our keynote speakers at AccessU.
Her name is Liz Jackson and she calls herself the girl with the purple cane. And she said, you know, they talk about life hacking.
Well, Here we are. People with disabilities are the original life hackers because we have to figure out how to make our way in this world that was not designed for us.
So our job as doing user studies is to really learn more about how can we make. The world more accommodating to more people.
One of the things that we've learned in doing these user studies and also just being in the disability accessibility digital access world.
Is that as you saw problems with the idea of accessibility in mind or disability in mind, You solve so many problems.
And there's this. Slide has like 6. Personas pencil drawings of people who have
Permanent, temporary and situational disabilities. People who are hard of hearing. People who are reading in an airport so you've got captions up here as the airport as you go by because you're not it's noisy.
You're not listening. Maybe the sound isn't even on, but you can follow what's going on because you can.
Read it in the captions that were there to, to serve people with disabilities. And teaching children to read so there are all these ways that the things that we do for people with disabilities actually serve many people.
In fact, my brother, when he kind of figured out what it was that I did in my in my work life.
He said, oh yeah, those captions. You know, that's kind of cool, isn't it, that, that deaf people benefit from the captions they put on so that I can watch the football game.
When I'm in the bar, he thought they were done for him and his and his football watching friends.
But solving a problem for one extends to many. And I think, no, go ahead, you can go forward.
That's great. And what we see are the different ways that inclusive design for physical disabilities like curb cuts and, voice recognition.
One finger use of mobile devices those kinds of accommodations originally designed for physical disabilities end up serving. You know The curb cuts, you know, the the guys who I live in Austin, Texas, Sixth Street is a place where we have a lot of music and bars.
And I've never seen anybody trying to deliver to those bars that doesn't go to the end of the street and use the curb cut.
So people traveling, travelers with luggage. Parents with baby strollers. Curb cuts are really helpful for a lot of people.
Next. Captions, I just talked about my goofy brother who thought the captions were made for him.
High contrast pinched to zoom, text the speech, all of those that were designed for sensory disabilities.
Just think for a minute. Of all the people who use that those. Affordances.
Cognitive disabilities too. I mean, I think that's something. That was started often in.
In schools, spell checkers, electronic dictionaries. Plain language, having the ability to make a single column of layout adjusting the brightness.
Those are all affordances that were originally thought of for people with cognitive disabilities or sensory sensitivities that End up helping everyone.
Designing for one! Expands to many and I just you know I think that's something that we as if we're talking about user studies as we find these things as we do a user study and we find barriers for people with disabilities.
If we extend that, I think we'll find that other. People even without disabilities, have more difficulty with those things and as we design.
As we design for accessibility for disabled people. We make better products for everyone.
Oh yeah, some of the examples are so cool of, you know, Apple's first gesture control touch screen iPhone.
Was originally designed for people with carpal tunnel injuries. And the very fact that you can control your phone or talk to Siri and get things.
Done just by talking to your phone, that came about because the original iPod couldn't be operated by blind students and so when Apple was trying to sell to the universities.
To in California to make their lectures available to students online. All 26. Campuses said we can't buy it because our blind students can't use it and instead of going to court which some people were prone to do, Apple just said, oh, okay, we'll go home and we'll put the best designers in the world on this problem and came back with this speaking interface that.
Now everybody uses. So, I think all of those hands free navigation technology are. Evolved.
From components that were developed. To meet the users.
Cool.
And now I'm going to turn it over to Jane. So, now, Jane, do I need to change the slides for you or?
Jane Schurick: No, no, no, we're good.
Sharron Rush: Okay, and do we want to, do we want to take any questions about anything I've said or we want to save questions for the end.
Jane Schurick: Sure, you can take questions. Anybody have any questions?
Sharron Rush: If anybody has questions or comments about what we said so far.
Okay, nope, you're on.
Jane Schurick: No. Okay. Good afternoon. Good evening, everyone.
My name is Jane Schurick and as Sharron said, I have been doing this for a long, long time.
I've been. With Knowbility for over 10 years doing user research, usability research, in general just user research.
And I'm just gonna talk a little bit about conducting research with people with disabilities. So really quickly, we'll talk a little bit about recruiting.
How do you find people with disabilities to be part of your user studies, space and equipment?
I'm really aren't gonna say much about recording and I'm not, and the reason is, that recording these days with zoom is just so easy.
You know, this is a little bit legacy, but, I used to talk about, you know, and actual having actual physical recorders and everything, but pretty much we do everything by zoom or an actual having actual physical recorders and everything but pretty much we do everything by zoom or online and it's just so easy to record.
Incentive and transportation etiquette forms interviews best practices and I'm not going to go in in this presentation into testing issues and workarounds, but if anybody has any questions or wants to get into that in more depth.
I'm happy to do that at some point. So we define, accessibility in terms of the user experience.
So Sharron talked about. The poor principals, the 4 poorer principles of accessibility, being perceivable, meaning people can know that something is there, that it's operable, they can navigate and operate what's there.
They can understand it and it is robust. And those principles really, and then when you think about Why do we have these principles?
It is exactly for the users and those 4 principles to find the users experience. And this is really pretty general.
I mean, it really applies to anyone. Whether they have a defined disability or not, the user experience means that what you're dealing with is perceivable.
It's operable. It's understandable and robust. So usability and accessibility. Pretty much go hand in hand.
So when we think about people and what they're doing. We, talk about whether people with disabilities can get the same information.
Perform the same interactions, interactions, and function as everyone else does with comparable ease. And when we say the same information, same interactions.
What we really mean is equivalent information and equivalent interaction. So can people with disabilities. You know, function, easily as everyone else.
Standards and guidelines are ways to measure. And document the use of recommended techniques but ultimately the measure of how well we are sites and apps work, is what defines whether it is useful or not.
So it really is, it's really grounded in the users of the site or the app and not necessarily the, The guidelines and the standards and all of that.
So let's talk a little bit about recruiting. What do you think about? When you think about running a user study.
And you think about who your users need to be. What kind of disabilities or kind of assisted technologies do you need to recruit for?
If you're running a user study on say your website, you know, websites are very visual.
And so it's probably important to include people who are blind and people who have various visual disabilities.
If your website has any video or audio, then similarly you want to include people who are deaf or heard of hearing.
But if the if your site doesn't include any auditory information at all, then maybe you want to avoid that group.
But it's always important to include people with visual disabilities and people. Who rely primarily on the keyboard.
You wanna make sure that your site can be accessed by the keyboard. And then in addition to thinking about what disabilities or what assistive technology you want to include, how much experience do they have with that existing technology?
You know, people can develop a disability at any time and share and talk about, Dr. Caldwell developing a disability later in life.
I don't think he was blind. But as if someone goes blind later in life. Then they probably don't have a lot of experience with a screen reader.
So that's something to consider. You probably want people who rely on the screen reader and who are expert, expert screen reader users, but also some people who don't have as much expertise.
With their assistive technology, just to make sure that you cover kind of the range of experience. And then what other characteristics do should your users have?
You know, is your Is your website or your app? Does it require certain skills or experiences or is it meant for certain demographics?
Location, you know, is it meant to be used primarily in, you know, in another country and things like that.
And then you need to consider the number of participants that you need to include in any user study. In usability research, we often cite the rule of 5.
Meaning that a majority of the disability issues can be can be identified or found with about 5 users. However, when you're thinking about people with disabilities, say you have a group of people who are blind and a group of people who are a deaf or heard of hearing because their needs are are going to be so different.
You probably need to include, you know, 4 or 5 users of each group or each disability type. You know, doing a study of 5 users with one person who's blind will find some of the issues that the blind person is going to face, but there can be workarounds there can be you know, that person might have a lot of experience with their assistive technology and may not uncover the issues that people
with a range of experience have. So think about that. I, I guess my rule of thumb would be to include 4 or 5 users of each disability type.
And right now, Mark is going to show us a video of Sheri Robinson, who is actually here with us today.
So if you have any questions or discussion that you'd like to have with her after our demo here.
She's here and can answer questions. But this is a user, registering, I believe it's, she was registering for a conference or something on a website called Humanitics.
And I'm going to stop sharing right now and then, Mark Wyden is going to show us this video.
Okay. Okay.
Mark Boyden: Hello there. Mark Boyden. I'm the IT guy. Here and Sheri contacted us to let us know that she was struggling with registering for AIR.
We chose Humanatix a while back because their experience was a lot. They worked really hard to bring accessibility to their registration system.
We had previously been using another system. That is was not, that accessible and. They have a commitment to, humanities has a commitment to accessibility.
Unfortunately, what happened is between the time of when we started using them and when we started doing registration for our AIR program.
They made an update and that broke some of the accessibility. So I met with Sheri online and she showed me what was going on and we went through a rather lengthy, not quite an hour experience of just understanding what the issues were.
I have condensed this down to about 10 min. And, just so that you can see a number of the struggles.
That, a, can be, hit upon by a a person that is either blind or has visual impairments and uses keyboard navigation to get around.
So I'll go ahead and get started on this. And I may stop it here or there just to give another a little bit of explanation just because I cut out so much of it.
Everybody's see the.
Sheri Robinson: Okay, so I'm on the get ticket so I will enter on that
Voiceover: Accessibility Internet, Rally? I mean, landmark, navigation, Line, Mark Llist with 3 items.
Step one, select tickets, Accessibility like, $150 client NPO artist, $150, DELIVERTEEN COMBOX, $25 developer individual compo box.
You.
Okay. Expanded list. 0 one of 2. 1, 2, 2.
1. $25 develop, individual compound box. One left. $305.
Mark Boyden: I, I want to point out here that, when, she added the ticket in, the button down at the bottom that says enter details went from gray to black to activate to use the keyboard.
To move to the next. Part of the form and it that button grayed out.
Voiceover: Let me put notable blank. Bless with you, I have search events like. Let's make 4 items all features like.
Mark Boyden: Okay, now that somehow we have jumped down to the foot or without. Oh. And to the inter details button.
After you choose a single by, by using the keyboard navigation. You go down to donations.
When you leave that, even setting it or just leaving it blank. It does not activate that button again.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It should not do that. It should recognize that that button is pressable.
If I put the 0 in here, it doesn't like it because it's too small, but I never get that button activating.
Voiceover: For your $5, have been put notable blank.
Mark Boyden: The fact that I went into that donation field.
Basically greys out and deactivates the button.
Sheri Robinson: Oh...
Mark Boyden: And I can't get it to come back without refreshing the page.
Voiceover: $25 developer individual comic box. You're Okay. One.
Mark Boyden: But the other way to pass is to, To choose, well, you'll have to refresh the page.
You'll have to put a one in the developer individual and then somehow not go into that donation field.
Sheri Robinson: Okay, so I did put the one correct
Mark Boyden: You did, but it did not. It does. Well, maybe it did activate it.
Sheri Robinson: Let me see if I go. Yeah, there we go.
Mark Boyden: Alright
Sheri Robinson: So I had to back up completely out of what I was going to order.
And then hit the B for button. Because when I was in the combo box for. You know, picking how many when I was hitting B, it wasn't going to buttons and it wasn't doing D for landmarks.
But once I backed up a few more steps and hit B. Now I'm on the inner details button.
Mark Boyden: Right. And so if you choose that, you should be able to go. So when you went to the first one it goes to this skipping the very first few fields apparently.
Voiceover: Website slash portfolio, you are already blank. Country compost.
Mark Boyden: So you can't see this right now, unfortunately, in the video and the cuts are, having some interesting aspects, but, when Sheri hit that button.
And came to this form. It put the cursor in a field that's about 5 or 6 fields down.
Voiceover: To like the left required to code any required leg. This field is required. This field is required. 3, this will be required.
Fire information grouping. Confirm, email, that required has auto-complete blank. This field is required.
This will be required. This field is required. Okay.
Mark Boyden: So that's, the beginning of the form of the discount code.
So the first name field should, be our first one.
Voiceover: First name, Eddie Quarter military is one of them keep this field.
Mark Boyden: That's should not have been the first tab field.
In terms of this, form. If you push this page. Let's see where you land if you don't mind.
Voiceover: Accessibility internet, rally.
Mainline mark, navigation line, markless with 3 items, at 200 details, basically current step.
Alright.
Fire information grouping. First name that required his autocomplete link.
Sheri Robinson: Because actually when I hit inner details on the last page It took me into the middle of this page. To I was doing ship tab to get up this far.
Voiceover: That it has auto complete blank.
HTML Complexed like the left required.
Sheri Robinson: Okay, and when we got to this I was like, okay, what is it asking for?
And she actually had to read the question to me.
Mark Boyden: Yeah, so you're fair. So there is a little bit of text in here.
So, and we do need to go back to the previous one, which was That's all it says.
It doesn't give the name of it or anything, does it? So this one. Team rolls and the description is please select all that describe you best.
Sheri Robinson: That's the front end developer. I mean, but honestly, Unless you had told me I wouldn't know what I was picking.
Mark Boyden: Exactly. So let's, check one of them. Are you a web developer, a web design or a program or a web design or a program or project manager, content editor or quality assurance manager, a web developer, or project manager, content editor or quality assurance manager?
Sheri Robinson: I think I picked the quality assurance.
Mark Boyden: Alright, that's the last one on the list.
Voiceover: Like option programmer focused.
Option project manager focused. 5% blank. Option content that to focus blank. Option quality insurance manager focus.
7077 results available. Use like option front end with developer focus. 1, 7.
6 results available. Use up and down to choose options. Press enters. So like the currently focus option.
Price is skate to make it the men you press have to select the auction and exit the menu.
Option call the insurance manager selected.
Sheri Robinson: Okay, so it did select me. Quite a lengthy explanation there that had me a little confused.
Mark Boyden: I can understand.
Sheri Robinson: I'm usually a little faster with the fingers and I miss half of the what it's saying sometimes.
So I'm really working on my patience and being slow and listening to the whole thing.
Mark Boyden: Right.
Sheri Robinson: Okay, so then I would tab
Voiceover: Back end with developer focus. 2075 results available. Use up and down to choose options.
Sharron Rush: Would you stop it for a minute and and let Jane tell us.
Mark Boyden: Price. I like the currently focus option. I appreciate you makes it menu. You don't have to choose one, but I think that.
Yes, by all means.
Sharron Rush: Just and let Jane tell us. Why this is not like a typical user study because you were guiding her, right?
Mark Boyden: Correct.
Sharron Rush: So Jane, you want to talk about what this would be like if it was in fact? A user study.
Jane Schurick: Yeah, so. So Sheri had contacted Knowbility because she was having trouble with with a Knowbility form or form that we, you know, that we put out there for error and, and, Mark.
Was able to get her on the phone and in a zoom call and watch and see what her experience is.
But, but you did notice that there was a lot of interaction between the 2 of them. If you had been doing an actual usability study and say that form was the task you wanted someone to fill out.
You would really leave it to them and let them go. It while you're just observing what's going on.
So you wouldn't have all of that interaction and you wouldn't have any of any of the guidance guiding where like Mark said, yes, what you want to what you want to select the quality insurance manager is at the end of the list.
You would let the the user discover that on their own and react to what they're what they're perceiving with their what they're seeing and perceiving.
So that's a little bit different, but really we wanted to show you this video to raise your awareness of why it's so important to do usability studies prior to putting your software out there because if that had been done, Humanatix would have found these issues and would have been able to fix them before the software went live.
So, this is really more of a, an awareness thing as opposed to a demonstration of an actual usability study.
Do you want me to go ahead and continue or Mark? Do you want to? Show more of the video.
Mark Boyden: Well, that's up to you all. It goes, it kinda goes through the aspect. There was a section here that I didn't, fully cover where.
Sheri, struggled with dealing with her address. I didn't want to include all that info in our presentation.
And then at the very end as we go to try and submit the form and there's a couple of other struggles that that Sheri ran into that I assisted her through.
But the last thing was is what you can see or could see on the screen at the end was the state box.
Didn't actually come up in the form until after. She chose the country and then the state box, which is 2 fields prior to the country choice shows up.
But it doesn't announce itself. So when Sheri went to submit, it came back and said, you have an error in the form and it was it didn't really help her find the error and such.
So more than anything this is just kind of a short illustration of the types of things that somebody can run into.
If the form is not correctly built.
Jane Schurick: And then just to reiterate, rather than doing the study with one participant, you, you would want, you know, 3 or 4 participants, to go through that because they are going to find different issues.
And I'll continue now, but am I sharing my screen still or do I need to do?
Mark Boyden: You are not, you will need to share your screen again, Jane.
Jane Schurick: Okay, so I need to figure out how I might need to end the slideshow briefly, cause I don't see my zoom controls.
Mark Boyden: Could be at the bottom of your Zoom screen.
Sharron Rush: Before we go on, I just wondered if anybody, yeah, any of our attendees had any comments or questions about what Sheri shared with us because she's here and I think it was really clear that she is an excellent.
User, right? She's a, she's a very skilled. User of this of this technology.
And yet she found these barriers that made it. Not just difficult, but actually impossible to fit to finish.
And this is from a company that Knowbility had vetted. And that had a, an accessible interface.
Until they did this update. So user testing or at least giving your users a good way. To contact you when they have when they experience barriers is really, really important.
Did anyone have any questions or comments? About this or Sheri, did you want to say anything more about it?
Sheri Robinson: I just wanted to thank Mark for for helping me out with that. And I just want to point out that was actually the second time I went through the form.
Cause when I was registering for AIR I just happen to have a friend here that could see. So when I hit a roadblock, She would help me out.
But if she hadn't been here, I don't know that I would have registered.
Cause I probably would've just stopped.
So.
Sharron Rush: See, and there's another good lesson that you're going to lose. You're going to lose business.
You're going to lose customers. You're going to lose participants if you're nonprofit, you're gonna lose donors, you're gonna you're gonna lose an entire segment.
Rather large segment of the population. So user testing will really give you an insight into that fact. I'm glad you persevered, Jerry, and I'm glad that Mark was able to help you because it sure has been great working with you during AIR.
Sheri Robinson: Well, thank you. Thank you. It's been fun.
Jane Schurick: Okay. I'm assuming there are no other questions. So how do you find users? There are various ways to find users with disabilities.
This is a shameless plug for Knowbility, but we do maintain a database that we call AccessWorks.
But consists of over 500 people with with various disabilities, including blind and low vision, death and part of hearing, physical and motor disabilities and cognitive impairments and neurodiversity disabilities.
We know what assist technology if any each of these people uses and we maintain we know their their age, gender and location and we do have quite a number of users.
Who are international. So if you are doing user testing and you're looking for people with disabilities, contact Knowbility, and we've got a contact at the end.
Actually, it might be on the next none. I think it's on the very last slide on in this deck of how to contact Knowbility and we can help you identify users for your studies.
If you do engage with us, we will do the recruiting per your specifications.
So number of users type of disability, assistive technology, etc. And if you have other skills or experience that you're looking for in your user group because you need to know what those things are.
You need to test certain people. You can let us know what those other experiences or skills are and we will put together a custom screener and send that out to everyone in our database and find the people that you need for your user study.
It also includes, all of the scheduling. Reminders and follow up with each participant.
Replacement of anyone who doesn't show up. Handling the participant incentive payments so people do get paid for participating in usability studies and we will handle that incentive payment.
And then optionally, if you don't have any, if you're not able or don't want to or don't have anyone on staff to actually moderate the study.
And design it, we will, we do offer study designing, moderation and reporting.
So, just a couple of test considerations, whether you do your usability, study in person or remote, there are advantages and disadvantages to doing it each way.
You know, years ago when I started out in the usability field many, many years ago, everything was done like in a usability lab and everything was done in person.
But over the years we've moved online and then when the pandemic hit, everything kind of moved online and now I pretty much do everything remotely.
But that's not to say that it has to be done that way. So if you're doing an in-person study, so if you're doing an in-person study, the advantages are you can more easily observe body language.
You can see the advantages are you can more easily observe body language. You can see the person's face and you know if they have a look of surprise.
On their face, you're more likely just to get that in person. And then it's also required for some products or interfaces.
If you're testing, you know, like a physical product or, you know, this summer we help someone recruiting recruit for a study that was testing some clothing that was designed for people with disabilities.
Those things have to be done in person. So, you know, it depends on what your product is, but if it is a website or an app, you probably have a little bit more leeway to to make a decision.
Do you want to do it in person or remote? The disadvantages of doing it in person is that it does require an accessible space.
You can only test local participants to wherever you happen to be. And you have to consider participant transportation to and from the test location.
And what we usually recommend in that case is to be prepared to reimburse your participants for their transportation and or parking costs.
And an in person test will probably require more time and money to set up. If you're doing a remote study and here we we do most of our studies using the Zoom Platform like we're on right now.
Although Webex, you know, Google Meet Microsoft Teams, all of those work, but we, recommend Zoom just because we feel very comfortable with the accessibility of the Zoom Platform itself.
But if you are doing remote testing, the advantages are you don't have those geographical limitations.
You can really test anywhere. You have much more flexibility with scheduling. Really you just need to know your time zone and participants time zone and what time slots you can you can fit them in.
It's more natural and realistic because your participant is gonna be in their own space at their computer using their assistive technology.
So it tends to be more natural. Then bringing somebody into your lab where you're probably using. Your computer and your assistive technology.
And as I mentioned, the tools are good and they are getting better and better. Zoom has always been pretty good.
We used to not recommend Webex but Webex is getting pretty good now. So the tools are good.
The clients of doing a remote study body language is a little bit more hard to observe and you might not see the participant's face.
You might, but you might not. Like right now you're looking at my face, my talking, but when I'm in a user study with a participant and there's an internet lich or things are slow.
The very first thing I tell them to do is turn off their, their camera. So there can be some, some bandwidth issues.
So you can try, having them. Put themselves on camera and watching their face, but you may not be able to do that.
Participants need to feel comfortable with the testing tools, whether it's Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever.
What we always do before we start a usability study is we do, we call it a tech check in advance.
A day or so in advance where we have the participant join the meeting, join the Zoom Meeting, learn how to get to chat, learn how to share their screen and just make sure that they know how to do all of those things having to deal with your test platform.
So you're not wasting, you know, precious time during the usability study itself when you might have, you know, some stakeholders, your management, other people observing and you really don't want to waste their time.
And then finally, screen magnification may be hard to observe, remotely. If your participants are using, zoom text.
And I'm not a real technical person, but when they share their screen and when you record a zoom tech screen, you don't get the screen and when you record a zoom tech screen, you don't get the magnified screen.
So when I'm moderating a study, you don't get the magnified screen. So when I'm moderating a study if somebody's using Zoom text, they might have everything magnified, you know, 6 or 7 times and all I'm looking at is the regular screen.
So that is just a limitation of Zoom text. If your participants are using browser Zoom or if they're using the built-in Zoom function within a Macintosh computer or Windows machine, those do appear to you and to your observers and on the recording as magnified screens.
So it's really a problem with Zoom text. All those of text is a very popular screen magnification program.
So you might run across users who are using it. So just something to be aware of.
In terms of the physical space, obviously you need and a location that all of your test participants can get to, whether they're in a wheelchair, whether they have a cane and a guide dog, things like that.
You probably want a flexible room to accommodate, service animals, wheelchairs. In you know adaptable furniture so a desk that can go up and down to the height of a person's assistive technology.
Make sure you're close to public transportation and that you have good signage. Be aware of service animals and you might be a nice person and offer, you know, an animal, a bowl of water.
But probably even more than that is just be aware and if you're testing in a location where other people around like at work or something, just let other people know that there might be people coming in.
And with animals. And then if they come in with an attendant, you want to just provide the accommodation some place for the attendant to sit whether you want the attendant in the room with the with you and the participant or if you want to provide another comfortable place for someone to sit and read or do other work.
So just some things to be aware of.
As I said, for remote studies, zoom, we always recommend zoom. We like zoom, but Webex, Google meet, Microsoft Teams, are all fairly accessible.
In terms of unmoderated testing studies. So when we started AccessWorks many years ago, we had a partnership with Loop 11.
It's an Australian company. And they offer a tool for unmoderated user studies. There's also optimal workshop, another Australian company, user testing and users zoom all have unauthorated tools.
I don't recommend these tools. And not only because there are some accessibility issues with platforms for the tools themselves, but if you're user gets stuck, they're kind of just dead in the water they can't continue so if there's an internet glitch or they can't figure out how to do something, or they can't figure out how to do something, you're not there as a
moderator to help them get beyond that. You're not there as a moderator to help them get beyond that, you're not there as a moderator to help them get beyond that that little issue.
Help them get beyond that little issue and then you lose that user completely. And you know, this is a talk on testing people disabilities, but in my opinion, that goes for any user testing that you're doing.
So you really want to make sure that, you know, that the people aren't gonna get stuck before you just leave them on their own to complete a user study without a moderator.
I've heard people being creative and, you know, put in like a video or, survey, or, something, on, Facebook, Instagram, you know, you're not going to get all of the details that you would by doing a moderated user study usability studying.
There are some things to think about in terms of whether they, if, they're coming to you, whether they bring their own equipment or.
They use your equipment. They're pros and cons each way. And obviously if you're doing remote studies there they are using their equipment in general that's probably the best thing to do is to let them use their own equipment because they have their own settings.
They're used to their keyboard. They're used to their assistive technology and all of that.
But on the other hand, sometimes it just doesn't make sense. You know, if they use a very large monitor, they're not going to come to you and bring that large monitor or if they you know have a specialized Braille display or something you may not have that so Just things to be aware of.
You always wanna pay an incentive and you always want to include transportation and parking, if necessary. And then in terms of etiquette, you always want to focus on the participant.
So if a participant comes and they have an attendant, talk to the participant or, you know, say they have an ASL interpreter talk to.
The participant don't talk to the attendant or the interpreter. If a person looks like they need help, ask if you can help ask if you can give them an elbow and guide them to the chair you want them to sit in.
Don't just do it, just ask. And, and let them guide you in how best you can help them.
Never asked, never touch without asking and that goes. You know, that's true for service animals also don't, talk to or touch a service animal unless it's obviously off due to off duty and the owner says okay and unless it's obviously off duty and the owner says okay and when it comes right down to it just use your common sense still panic if you have a question, okay. And when it comes right down to it, just use your common sense. Don't panic.
If you have a question, just use your common sense. Still panic. If you have a question, ask. Don't panic. If you have a question, ask.
People are very, generally really open and will help you help them
In terms of, a background interview, you can ask about their disability. You can ask about the specifics, how long they've had this disability, what the disabilities effect is on the computer usage and their daily living.
You probably don't want to get into medical diagnosis, but you can ask functionally how their disability affects, you know, their work, their lives and things like that.
Assistive technology is always helpful to know what they use, how long they've used it, how they learned it.
Any customization settings and preferences they they apply to their assistive technology. And then just in general to give you a more rounded idea.
Of who your users are. How technology has helped them and hasn't helped them, live their lives.
And then finally, we always get questions about, you know, what websites work really well, which are accessible and what don't work so well.
Ask your users, let them tell you what works well for them and what doesn't work and why.
Usability is all about the context and probing and understanding how your users are using your technology.
And I know we're right at the top of the hour. I'm talking kind of fast now, but we only have.
2 more slides. In terms of best, best practices, always start with an accessibility audit.
There's no reason to get it, always start with an accessibility audit. There's no reason to get, you know, to plan a whole big usability test and get your users all lined up and have, you know, say 4 or 5 users who are blind, and only to find out that your images don't have text alternatives.
That's something that you can easily find out, ahead of time and fix ahead of time.
And the WAI, the web accessibility initiative has a set of easy checks and there is a link to get to them.
And these are just. Kind of, you know, the low hanging fruit of things that you can actually check on your website.
In terms of finding accessibility issues that that you probably want to fix before you get into a usability study.
Think about scheduling schedule and timing. It can take a little bit longer to test people with disabilities.
You probably want to space them apart a little bit more than you might if you're testing people that don't have disabilities.
Reconsider your think aloud technique. Sometimes people, with various disabilities, but if you, if you think of people who are blind, they have a lot of auditory information coming into their ears with Jaws or their screen reader talking and things.
And sometimes it's hard for them to. Be listening. To the screen reader and processing what's going on on the website and continue talking.
So often what I will do is have them go through the task on their own without talking and then when they're done with the task, then we step back through it and I can and have them describe at that point what they did what they were finding and then I can ask my probing questions.
Consider communication if you're testing people who are deaf, you know, how are you going to communicate with that person? Do they want to use captions?
Do they want a sign language interpreter and things like that? Again, in terms of assistive technology, are they bringing theirs or using yours?
Always do a check check. Always do a pilot test. That's just general usability is you probably want to do a pilot test in advance of your actual user test to test the, you know, the whether people can understand your tasks and timing and things like that.
And then what boils down to it just ask. And with that, we've got some resources here.
These are links that were further back in the presentation. As well as you can see down at the bottom, as well as you can see down the bottom accesses for AccessWorks email accesses for AccessWorks email.
And with that I will. Say thank you and open it up to questions if people have any questions and can hang on a little bit longer.
Mark Boyden: We had one from earlier, Jane. This was, about the different, affinity models.
I thought the social model was about the problem being in the hands of society to make the environment more accessible for people with disabilities.
But you said sounded more like the social cultural affinity model. Can you clear this up for me?
And.
Jane Schurick: Sharron, pass that over to you.
Sharron Rush: Yeah, there were 2, there was the social model and then below that was the. There, which is exactly what you said.
That it is the responsibility of society to create. Accessible environments for all people including those with disabilities.
And then the last one, we didn't, I don't remember what it was that you called it, but we called it the social identity, it's that idea that it becomes part of a person's identity.
So I'm not exactly sure. What I think the clarification is just that with the social.
The social model, you're just saying it's society's responsibility to address. I don't think either one of them are contradictory.
It's the society's, it's not a problem with me, it's a problem with a society that doesn't create.
Accessible environments for me. And then the social identity model just says that I. Identify with pride on my The fact that I am a disabled person and and that it is part of how I see my.
Self as a human in the world that my disability is part of who I conceive, how I conceive of my own.
Identity. Was that clear or was that still just muddled?
Sheri Robinson: No, I'm sorry. I didn't hear you say social identity. I apologize.
Sharron Rush: Oh no, no need for an apology at all. I think free ranging conversations around these topics are always helpful and what we've seen through the years is that the way that we like so many things in society.
The way we refer to and think about and address. Disability really has evolved. I think.
Since. You know, as we We have identity politics of all kinds. And excuse me, disability is one of those.
And I think that that it really is a great example when we talk about intersectionality. How you can be.
Black brown, whatever. Whatever nationality, ethnicity, language speaking and have disabilities and that it's part of, you know.
Part of your human. Male, female. Other gendered however and still be part of the disability community.
It's a It's kind of a reminder of how how broad and many faceted the human experience actually is.
Jane Schurick: Any more questions? Any comments?
Sharron Rush: And we're happy to, we're happy to send these slides. If anyone wants them, just drop email to, Me or Jane or Mark, any of us are happy to send those along.
I don't know if we recorded this one. We didn't record the one we did earlier with the air.
Rally, but we may have, did we record this one, Mark?
Yes.
Okay.
Mark Boyden: This one is recorded. We will, get it out in the next several days and we will send a follow up email along with, or link to the materials.
Sharron Rush: Okay.
Oh, okay, great. Well then, that's all done. It's a done deal and I thank you on the end of the day.
Yes, many thanks to Sheri. Sheri was our. What's our guest? Our.
Guest speaker today. Did a great job. Thanks for sharing your experience, Sheri.
Sheri Robinson: You're welcome. You are welcome and thank you all.
Bye bye.
Sharron Rush: Thank you. Audios! Bye!
Mark Boyden: Bye bye.