Accessibility Design in HCI

Fall 2017. Instructors: Jeff Bigham

Bettina Chou
Aug 29, 2017 · 5 min read

Class/reading notes and reflections. Normal office hours are from 2–5pm on Thursdays in 407 S. Craig (second floor, in the back).

8.29 | Introduction to Accessibility

Why this exists and examples

Interesting Examples

  • Ray Kurzweil computer scientist and futurist. Involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. Worked on one of the first text-to-speech readers.

8.31 | The Web

How the internet is built, how accessibility interacts with this architecture, and design

  • Patrick, the TA does “chairables” so wearables but for wheelchairs

How internet/web is built

  • Before easy access to computer information you were restricted to what was physically available at your local library (not everything was braille, large print, or audio book)

Disability feels like “loss of independence”; accessibility ignites innovation

How accessibility interacts with this architecture

  • Content: HTML

How do you make these accessible?

  • Early web was pretty accessible because most people just used text, but now there are many graphics and interactive elements. Screen readers may used to just emphasize bolded words

Making Web-Based Activity Accessible

Jeff took a picture of our class, put them on a google board and asked us all to label each other’s names. Thoughts on this process:

  • How would a blind person begin to use this? Misaligned faces, how to match labels to faces, what faces look like.

9.5 | Web Content Accessibility

History of WCAG, implementation basics, useful tools to apply WCAG, practice in-class

History

  • Americans with disabilities act (ADA)

Tools

ironic how this tool is not user-friendly ;____; how do you interpret this??
  • http://wave.webaim.org/ can be used to inspect existing websites and reveal inefficiencies

Activity— Looking at existing sites

  • Reddit: all images lack alt text, but it’s user generated content. How important would it be and does Reddit even have an option to add alt text? Social media in general have this problems.

9.7 | Class

Discussing examples of accessibility we found and reviewing first project

Interesting Examples

  • Sticky Keys: use keyboard with one hand and reduce repetitive strain injury

Interesting: people often think accessibility features are a bug and aren’t sure how to exit the mode

  • iOS Home Button Opening: many time-based interactions require accessibility; can cause big problems.
  • Netflix audio descriptions: Dare Devil is a blind superhero, so when they released Dare Devil, they also released this feature
This technology currently only works for people with partial hearing loss, not total

9.19 | Screen Readers

  • Formatting emails and documents are purely visual, so visually impaired people might not immediately think to do so.

Activity — One person is screen reader, the other is vision impaired user

  • tabbing through everything and reading everything is tedious; I just made the decision of what he needed and directed his track pad to click on it. How would this kind of “smart” technology work in computers?
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Bettina Chou

Written by

CMU School of Design. Process documentation and reflections for work in and out of the classroom. Spring 2016–present. Portfolio at Bettinayc.com

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