Inclusive Usability Techniques in Requirements Analysis of Accessible Web Applications

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good morning I'm Lourdes Moreno. I apologize because I'm not confident in English. Maybe, I can't understand you, when you ask me. Please, Be Patient with me. Thank you. I will present the work: “Inclusive Usability Techniques in Requirements Analysis of Accessible web Applications”. It has made in conjunction with Paloma Martinez y Belen Ruiz, from University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain
• #3: There is a continued growth in the use of the Web. But every people don’t access to the web in the same way: there are different access devices, user agent, use context, user group profiles, … It is necessary to take into account this diversity to provide accessibility to web contents. The access barriers to web affect not only to people with disabilities. Users usually have other kind of problems derived from the context of use and technological incompatibilities. It is essential an advance avoiding the exclusion of user groups. Providing full accessibility to the Web contents.
• #4: To solve such accessibility issues, the World Wide Web Consortium W 3 C, to promote a Web Accessibility Initiative W A I. Its standard more important of WAI in web content is, “The web Content Accessibility Guideline”, WCAG 1.0., standard to be considered in many countries. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines documents, explain how to make Web content accessible. As related works also are : Various proposals of integrating usability in the development process and, some of them name the accessibility but, they don’ t take it completely into account. There are works with adapting the accessibility guides applied: in the accessibility evaluation methodology, monitorization and metric studies among others. There are methodologies approach, considering the accessibility as requirement non-functional. There is an important proposal by using User Centered Design UCD, to integrate accessibility into analysis phase; this approach has been used in this work. In these works: the accessibility criteria are not covered in the whole life cycle of the web applications, nor fully integrated and, there is enough to support for the web designer. This work is the focus of a thesis research, awa, Accessibility for Web Applications A W A. Its objective is to offer a methodological support to integrate accessibility, from an Web engineering perspective, in the whole life cycle of a web application.
• #5: From a technical point of view, a web designer is demanded to design an accessible web application. And he follow the accessibility standard such Web Content Accessibility Guideline WCAG . But, Is it enough to capture accessibility requirements? There are other aspects more focused on the usability and/or the web user interaction could go unnoticed. For this reason, there is the necessity to integrate usability and accessibility in software processes following a User Centered Design UCD using usability techniques which guarantee the participation of the user in the whole life cycle of the development of a web application. But, it having in mind, apart from the usual user, all the users with disabilities too. This is the peculiarity that User Inclusive Design Framework has.
• #6: A web site has been developed for the organism, Spanish Centre of Captioning and Audio Description CESyA. It works towards the accessibility in audiovisual media using captioning and audio description services. One of the requirements is that the web has to be accessible according to the Web Content Accessibility Guideline standard. Some experiments have been carried out on this web site, to enable the evaluation of the consequences that to apply or not inclusion in the analysis phase. In this work, two web development processes have been carried out under the same domain, with different ways to act in the capture of requirements. Two cases: the “inclusive Case” which the web prototype has been developed in the framework of Inclusive Design and, the “Non Inclusive Case” in not inclusive approach.
• #7: The characteristics in both cases are: The Analysts had similar characteristics (no experience in design and development of accessible web applications, but with some training in accessibility items based on the WAI, Web Content Accessibility Guideline documentation). The same technological profile with a basic core. But there is a difference in users participation in the experiment: with only users without disabilities in the “Non Inclusive Case”, and in “Inclusive Case” there was a participation with users and without disabilities.
• #8: The proposal basic considered in this work is: to follow, the “Web Content Accessibility Guideline” to cover the more technical aspects, and to take a user-centered Design approach using techniques usability to be closest to the user. The initial hypothesis is: In the iterative process, the inclusive case needs fewer changes in the redesign. The figure show the standard process: “Human-centered processes for interactive system” that provides a framework that incorporating a User Centered-Design UCD along the development life cycle. The first step is a capture of requirements in the Analysis phase in each case: with or without inclusion. Based on the knowledge of data capture, the prototypes are designed and developed, and in second step they will be evaluated. In this point, it evaluated the consequences that apply or not inclusion, it detected new requirements to introduce an iterative process. And finally it evaluates the initial hypothesis in the third step.
• #9: To pass to analysis phase for the capture of requirements with different ways to act
• #10: The usability techniques used in this work and that to recommend to integrate accessibility in the Analysis phase: User profiles, Person focus, Scenarios, Card Sorting, Prototype and brainstorming. In all of them there is involvement of the user so fictitious or real. Moreover, these modeling user techniques as user profiles, Person focus and Scenarios to facilitate to model a heterogeneous audience.
• #11: With the information previously extracted from investigation, interviews, etc. starts the process of user modeling and, The common attributes are defined, These attributes based on users and according to their access characteristics such as: age, profession, frequent use of internet, information needs and software used, such as different browsers, players, etc. (me paso a la siguiente diapositiva) In the study, these attributes and values have been established, and some User profiles considering these common attributes. In the Inclusive Case, more attributes are considered both in user’s characteristics, for instance, whether user has a disability or not, for instance: special browsers as text browsers, adapted assistive technology amongst others. (vuelvo) In this point, the extension and heterogeneous coverage, which could make the total categorization of the audience not be possible or too expensive. And so, it is convenient to make use of the focus of Person.
• #12: In the study, these attributes and values have been established, and some User profiles considering these common attributes. We have an approximation to all the users we want to reach to. In user modeling in the Non Inclusive Case, users with disabilities have been excluded, as to considered that the development of a web site which complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guideline would already cover their access needs. On the other hand, in the Inclusive Case, more attributes from the second column of Table are considered both in user’s characteristics, for instance, whether user has a disability or not, and in access characteristics, for instance, special browsers as well as only text browsers, adapted assistive hardware technology amongst others.
• #13: In Person Focus Technique; the people will represent behavior patterns, objectives and necessities of groups of people, which they can be fictional, but they have characteristics based real information, extracted from the users. The patterns will never represent, the totality of the groups of the real users, but do represent them in their majority. In the “Inclusive Case” the designer to have in mind the all users, knowing in all moments the type of design that will be needed. The categorization of the audience is more feasible, in this line, to improve it, we can use of Scenarios technique.
• #14: To make more realistic the descriptions of the use of the Web, use scenarios and person focus. The Scenarios technique describes situations of Web usage, conceptualizing the Human-Machine Interaction with fictitious users. In the “Inclusive Case”, the scenarios show people with a variety of disabilities which use different technologies and strategies of adaptation to be able to access the Web. The Inclusive case does not mean an exaggerated additional cost and web designer becomes familiar with the user and designs taking into account his/her characteristics. With the approach of Scenarios, the size of sample is minimized, by studying various User profiles in only one scenario
• #15: The figure shows an example of a scenario made in the "Inclusive Case“, it is not anything accessible, don’t see anything, so now we will see with zoom next. It taking into account these new variables causes an increment of the number of users and contexts of use which need to be studied. But the study could be feasible with a reasoning of parallelism between users who are not disabled in unfavorable use contexts with disabled users. For example: The way to avoid accessibility barriers that affect a person with hearing impairment is also valid for a user without disabilities in silent environment
• #16: The block upper consists of the identification and description of the scenario expressed in natural language. She is a user with partial vision that uses screen magnifiers to access the Web.
• #17: Then there is a part where specifies the characteristics of access and use context of the character, these features come from the common attributes modeling user. As an added value, we have to keep in mind factors such as the use of magnifiers, screen readers, etc, we must investigate matters that will affect the future design of the user interface such as: how users with screen readers will access information, how to access it with a magnifier, how is someone supposed to design and write texts to make them more comprehensible, etc.
• #18: This block describes the users who have studied in this scenario. With these scenarios more coverage is gained. This is because not only is the User profile that belongs to the person studied, main scenario with character, but many more characters are studied such as the secondary characters which are satisfied with the application of the primary character. And following a reasoning of parallelism between users who are not disabled in unfavorable use contexts with disabled users, many more characters are studied too.
• #19: And finally, it provides information about how to avoid barriers to accessibility. It obtained from the WCAG and the investigation of the interaction with users. These aspects of the accessibility in the Inclusive case have proactively been considered for the future design phases.
• #20: Another technique used is Card Sorting The card sorting technique is based on the observation of how real users perform the task of clustering a predetermined number of labelled cards with different thematic categories of the web site. Provides valuable information to capture requirements. The objective is to understand the mental model of the user, to organize information in relation to user 's needs.
• #21: The figure show multidimensional scaling analysis MDS Graph obtained in the Non Inclusive Case and Inclusive Case by using Card sorting technique. In the Inclusive Case it has been found a diversity amongst some groups, it has been found elements with problems (blog card, documentation card, etc.) without belonging to any visual group. Therefore, interviews allow us obtaining valuable information about (a) detecting possible barriers modifying the architecture of information and (b) the design of post phases knowing that the elements of the architecture could have problems which would require attention and reinforcing its design.
• #22: Finally, the low cost prototype have been created in the requirements phase: digital prototypes with a retouch photography program In these prototypes, the design specifications for the future web have been detailed, content units, selection of style, use of colors taking into account the consistency, the contrast, etc. They have given a great support in decisions making and visual brainstorming meetings have taken place in base to these prototypes with the client, heuristic evaluation, user testing, modifying with a low cost important points and a better usability and accessibility.
• #23: To pass to analysis phase for the evaluations of prototypes
• #24: Significant observations: There are many factors that have been detected in the “Inclusive Case” in relation to the “Non Inclusive Case”: (1) Different types of HW and SW access can produce accessibility barriers, especially in the indirect access to the web by users who need assistive technologies (2) Different levels of browsing in the in different groups of users, etc. (3) Concerning the information architecture, different mental models where information is clustered.
• #25: The two prototypes implemented according WCAG 1.0. Regarding usability, on a earlier stage of the prototype, there were two heuristic evaluations. According to obtained results, barriers and improvements were found and, in both cases, they were corrected. About these prototypes, a more extensive accessibility evaluation was taken following the WAI methodology and the usability, such as: 1) Expert and Manual revision following Validation Methodology WAI. 2) A test was made with users in both cases, including people with or without disabilities and diverse conditions of usage to evaluate usage aspects and access in both prototypes. This test has been based on the questionnaires and forms that users have filled in: Forms where the accessibility characteristics and context of use are reflected, as well as software and hardware characteristics in tests development. Questionnaires to evaluate usability according to heuristic evaluation, and accessibility of the different areas of the Web.
• #26: To pass to analysis phase for the hypothesis Evaluation The most important enhancements in accessibility, as was suggested by users according to the test carried out, and are shown next. And it will appreciate the consequences that applying or not inclusion in the analysis phase.
• #27: The more important changes detected disabled users' reviews are in the "Non Inclusive Case" and have not been required to include in the “Inclusive Case" because knowledge extracted from phase analysis and applied in the development of the web site are: The screen reader users of the “Non inclusive Case” suggested: Links more descriptive. (screen reader users) Icon and decorative image with a correct marking: The decorative image with the alt =”“ and icon is included in CSS Use Invisible shortcut The screen magnifier users suggested: The navigation menus were not located in the corners, but the users do not see them.
• #28: They like Lines which frame the information The font type used was Verdana. The users would prefer bolder fonts as Arial. Other suggestions were - Language accessibility - Better definition of the header elements - More usability and accessibility in the multimedia elements , give to control for the user. Some users could not access this resource. - Direct access in resizing/font-scaling and high-contrast mode. Although compatible access is provided to user following WCAG, users suggested direct access too, not all of them knew use browser options.
• #29: The hypothesis is true: The “Inclusive Case” need fewer changes in the redesign than “Non Inclusive Case” Consequently, in the “Inclusive Case” has produced a reduction of costs in the development, avoiding new requirements to have in mind in the development process
• #30: To follow to User Centered Design (UCD) using usability techniques WCAG: The benefits providing by the guidelines are fundamental for designers but, for professionals without previous experience in the development of accessible web applications, the WCAG make knowledge obtained in the “Inclusive Case” an added value. The UCD framework with usability techniques help to come closer to the user, but the benefits of the inclusion in the analysis phase are distinguishable.
• #32: Maybe, I can't understand you, when you ask me. Please, Be Patient with me. Thank you.