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Moderator: Eric Bergman, SunSoft Inc.
Discussant: Clayton Lewis, University of Colorado
Panelists
Organizers
Eric Bergman and Earl Johnson, SunSoft Inc.
Despite high profile discussions of user-centered design in the CHI community, until recently a substantial population of users has been largely ignored. Users who have restricted or no use of hands, eyes, ears, or voice due to environment, task context, repetitive strain injury, or disability constitute a diverse and significant user population, but these users receive relatively little mention in mainstream HCI conferences or literature. Design considerations for users with vision, hearing, or movement impairments overlap with those for the general population across a variety of tasks and contexts (e.g., high workload tasks, automobile systems, phone interfaces). Following on this theme, the panel will promote discussion of so-called "Universal Design" -- design for the broadest possible range of users.
accessibility, disability, universal design.
Our panelists agree on the importance of Universal Design, but have different perspectives on what it means, to what extent it can be achieved, and the HCI, technical, and social barriers to doing so. Each panelist will provide a brief statement of their perspective. Panelists will discuss short-term and long-term solutions to questions and scenarios drawn from real life describing users with restricted input or output capabilities. Questions discussed may include:
The focus will be on users with disabilities, but with an eye towards applicability to the general user population. The panelists provide four distinct perspectives: a technology policy expert, an access technology manager from a major operating system/application vendor, an access technology developer, and a university based HCI researcher. At the close of discussion, the moderator will suggest simple low-cost actions that attendees can take to improve accessibility of their designs today, and the discussant will focus on implications for HCI as a whole.
Few members of the CHI community have had exposure to issues surrounding users with disabilities. We expect that this panel will increase awareness of how Universal Design can benefit both people with disabilities and any user whose task or environment dictates alternative interaction styles.
It was once pointed out to me that it is the decisions that designers make when they are not thinking about people with disabilities which have the greatest affect on their lives. Another way of looking at that is to say that if designers had slightly greater awareness of the breadth of abilities of potential users then very little extra effort would be necessary to make universal access a reality. Addressing difficult questions gives us an opportunity to generate novel answers. For the most part the technology is available. There is no reason why we should remain tied to the keyboard, mouse and screen. True multi- modality can make an interface more usable for the majority of users - and can make the difference between being usable and totally inaccessible for others.
The motivation also now exists to put these ideas into practice. In the United States laws are forcing manufacturers to address the needs of the whole broad range of users, so that it has become a commercial imperative. In Europe legislation varies from country to country but overall is not as effective as in the US. However, the European Commission is keen to develop assistive technology and is encouraging this through its TIDE initiative.
Alistair Edwards is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, and a member of the HCI Research Group. His principal interest is the use of multiple interaction modalities to make computers accessible to people with disabilities. He is editor of the recent book, Extra-Ordinary Human-Computer Interaction.
Progress towards universal design can be achieved in the short run by (1) changing the underlying assumptions about universal design. Universal design strategies can be a creative shortcut to creating fundamentally more useful interfaces, rather than merely a nice thing to do for disabled people. And, (2) universal design can best be implemented by using the design process to catch problems that result in less useful applications.
In the longer run, expert systems that can assist in the implementation of universal design could be extremely useful, with multimedia used to provide a closer look at good examples of universal design. Such systems could take an engineer or product designer through a process that would begin by taking into account usability requirements for people with permanent or temporary functional limitations. The result would be new and better technology innovations for all. Pending legislation will require regulations to be developed regarding access to information technology for disabled people. The challenge will be to develop regulations that allow creative solutions based on industry/consumer consensus.
Deborah Kaplan is Vice-President of the World Institute on Disability. She is also the Director of the Division on Technology Policy, for which she oversees policy projects that bring together leaders of national disability groups with representatives of the telecommunications industry to educate each other and find common goals.
Computer systems have traditionally been developed without thought about their impact or benefit for people with disabilities. Business was uninterested due to low demand from the mainstream market (including employers), low visibility of the disability community as a market, and lack of formalized knowledge of the principles and benefits of accessible software design. The issue has gained prominence and we have published guidelines, but adoption is still slow because of demanding project schedules, and because the standardization called for often conflicts with the company's need to innovate in their user interface and in developing more efficient, customized implementations.
To address these needs, Microsoft has undertaken educational initiatives to raise awareness of accessibility issues and promote accessible design principles, and also technical initiatives designed to free software from the implementation constraints required for accessibility today. Microsoft is also trying to set a positive example for the industry as the first software company to adopt a corporate policy on accessibility, and by strengthening ties with the disability community.
However, to truly motivate commercial organizations we must continually demonstrate the benefits accessible design provides to all users through improved ease of use, support for future user interfaces such as hands- free and eyes-free operation, and improved automation and application integration.
Greg Lowney is a senior program manager responsible for coordinating activity at Microsoft related to making computer systems, products, and services accessible. Mr. Lowney founded and has managed Microsoft's Accessibility and Disabilities group since 1992.
A truly well-designed UI is one that the user does not notice. However, today's computer interfaces have become so complex that they often overshadow the computing task that they were supposed to enable. Alan Perlis once said "One man's constant is another man's variable." Today's computer interfaces reflect the truth of this statement in no uncertain measure when one tries to provide alternative access paths to standard computing tasks.
To date, attempts at providing alternative speech access have concentrated on retrofitting speech interfaces onto a visual UI that was designed with no thought to alternative modalities. The inadequacy of these screen-access interfaces points to the need for separating the UI from the underlying compute engine and treating speech as a first-class medium in the interface.
Adobe Systems is committed to ensuring that our key applications such as Acrobat are equally accessible to all users. Mainstreaming of speech technology offers HCI researchers a unique opportunity to rethink application design. Adaptive technology offers researchers the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of this field. The benefits of separating the UI from the underlying compute engine will be first felt in the field of adaptive technology.
But in the long-term, the benefits of adaptive technology are far greater to the general user. History has proven this over and over again --- how many of us remember that the invention of the telephone was a by-product of attempts to invent a hearing aid?
T. V. Raman works at Adobe Systems. His interests include richly encoded electronic documents and speech interfaces. You can read about his work and use interactive demonstrations of some of the systems he has built at the URL: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman.