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Mobile Accessibility in Touchscreen Devices: Implications from a Pilot Study with Blind Users on iOS Apps in iPhone and iPad, Rızvanoğlu
Abstract
Mobile technology is a new frontier for accessibility. Although mobile developers need solid guidelines to provide accessible experiences, there is a limited number of empirical research on mobile accessibility of different mobile platforms that work through various assistive technologies. In this context, more information is needed to understand both usage patterns and hardware/software platforms to guide decisions to meet the needs of people with disabilities who use mobile devices. This study, which is a pilot study of a long-term research, evaluates the accessibility of selected built-in and third party iOS applications in the iPhone and iPad through an extensive accessibility test with two blind users who are novice users of touchscreen mobile devices. This qualitative study is based on a multi-method approach, which consists of a background questionnaire, task observation, and a structured debriefing interview. The study also employs observation methods of data collection in order to gain better insight in mobile accessibility. The participants are demanded to execute three different tasks on each platform by using VoiceOver, which is the built-in screen reader in iOS. The participants are observed during the task executions and the “think aloud” procedure and video recording of the participants collected additional data. A short debriefing interview was also made to gain a detailed insight into the user experience. The findings reveal significant accessibility problems caused specifically by design of the graphical user interface features of the applications and limitations of the screen reader. Finally, as part of future research directions, preliminary guidelines are proposed to improve accessibility for iOS applications in both platforms.
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Recent advances in touch screen technology have increased the prevalence of touch screens and have prompted a wave of new touch screen-based devices. However, touch screens are still largely inaccessible to blind users, who must adopt error-prone compensatory strategies to use them or find accessible alternatives. This inaccessibility is due to interaction techniques that require the user to visually locate objects on the screen. To address this problem, we introduce Slide Rule, a set of audio- based multi-touch interaction techniques that enable blind users to access touch screen applications. We describe the design of Slide Rule, our interaction techniques, and a user study in which 10 blind people used Slide Rule and a button-based Pocket PC screen reader. Results show that Slide Rule was significantly faster than the button-based system, and was preferred by 7 of 10 users. However, users made more errors when using Slide Rule than when using the more familiar button-based system.
Mobile devices provide people with disabilities new opportunities to act independently in the world. However, these empowering devices have their own accessibility challenges. We present a formative study that examines how people with visual and motor disabilities select, adapt, and use mobile devices in their daily lives. We interviewed 20 participants with visual and motor disabilities and asked about their current use of mobile devices, including how they select them, how they use them while away from home, and how they adapt to accessibility challenges when on the go. Following the interviews, 19 participants completed a diary study in which they recorded their experiences using mobile devices for one week. Our results show that people with visual and motor disabilities use a variety of strategies to adapt inaccessible mobile devices and successfully use them to perform everyday tasks and navigate independently. We provide guidelines for more accessible and empowering mobile device design.
This paper presents a study of finger-based text entry for mobile devices with touchscreens. Many devices are now coming to market that have no physical keyboards (the Apple iPhone being a very popular example). Touchscreen keyboards lack any tactile feedback and this may cause problems for entering text and phone numbers. We ran an experiment to compare devices with a physical keyboard, a standard touchscreen and a touchscreen with tactile feed- back added. We tested this in both static and mobile envi- ronments. The results showed that the addition of tactile feedback to the touchscreen significantly improved finger- based text entry, bringing it close to the performance of a real physical keyboard. A second experiment showed that higher specification tactile actuators could improve per- formance even further. The results suggest that manufactur- ers should use tactile feedback in their touchscreen devices to regain some of the feeling lost when interacting on a touchscreen with a finger. Author Keywords
This paper presents a framework and system to evaluate the accessibility of web pages according to the individual requirements of users with disabilities. These requirements not only consist of users' abilities, but also users' assistive technologies and the delivery context. In order to ascertain interoperability with other software components, user requirements are specified taking advantage of the extensibility of the W3C CC/PP recommendation and other feature- specification vocabularies. An evaluation tool capable of understanding these specifications generates evaluation reports that are tailored to the user's individual needs. Quantitative accessibility measures resulting from personalized evaluation reports can be used to improve the web browsing experience for users with disabilities, such as through adaptive navigation support and by sorting the results of search engines according to users' personal requirements. In addition, developers benefit from personalized evaluations when developing websites for specific audiences.
This study evaluated the hypothesis that design aspects of the user interface of the applications and the capabilities and
constraints of different mobile devices could affect mobile user experience in social network sites (SNS). For this purpose
a qualitative mobile usability test, based on a multi-method approach, was carried out with a sample of 25 Turkish university
students who were experienced mobile SNS users. The tests were conducted with two different smartphones: Iphone and Blackberry.
The participants were observed during the task executions and additional data was collected by the “think aloud” procedure,
eye-tracking and video recording of the participants. A short debriefing interview was also made to gain a detailed insight
into the user experience. The findings revealed significant mobile usability problems caused specifically by the user interface
features of the applications and limitations of each device and enable to propose guidelines to improve user experience in
mobile SNS.
This paper describes the development of a new technique for touchscreen interaction, based on a single gesture-driven adaptive
software button. The button is intended to substitute the software keyboard, and provides text-entry functionality. Input
is accomplished through recognition of finger gestures that is comprised of movement towards the eight basic directions in
any position. The target user group of such an interaction technique is primarily blind people who could benefit significantly.
The adaptability of the button provides complementary help and follows the style of interaction in a natural way. The analysis
of the results, collected from twelve blindfolded subjects, revealed an encouraging tendency. During blind manipulation on
touch screen, three of the subjects achieved a maximal typing speed of about 12 wpm after five trials. This suggests that
the technique developed is reliable and robust enough to be possibly applied to diverse application platforms, including personal
device assistants.
After the launch of the Mobile Web Initiative at the World Wide Web Conference 2005, awareness is emerging that, today, mobile Web access suffers from interoperability and usability problems that make the Web difficult to use. With the move to small screen size, low bandwidth, and different operating modalities, technology is in effect simulating the sensory and cognitive impairments experienced by dis- abled users within the wider population of mobile device users. The Third International Cross-Disciplinary Work- shop on Web Accessibility (W4A 2006) was targeted to bring together different communities working on similar problems to share ideas, discuss overlaps, and make the fledging mobile Web community aware of accessibility work that may have been overlooked. The main question asked was: ''Is engineering, designing, and building for the Mobile Web just a rehash of the same old Web accessibility problems?'' This lead to addressing issues such as: • Are the same solutions required for the Mobile Web and for accessibility and can the two communities work together to solve these problems? • What can the Mobile Web learn from the Accessible Web and what resources created to support the Accessible Web can be used by designers in their support of the Mobile Web? • To cross-pollinate do we need to rethink the current view of accessibility? Therefore, the workshop brought together a cross section of designers, engineers, and practitioners working on both the Accessible and Mobile Webs; to report on develop- ments, discuss the issues, and suggest cross-pollinated
Touchscreen computing devices such as the iPhone are becoming more common. However this technology is largely inaccessible to people with visual impairments. We present the results of a requirements capture study that illustrates the problems with touchscreen accessibility, and the choices visually impaired people make when choosing assistive technology. We investigate ways of overcoming touchscreen accessibility problems by comparing a raised paper overlay touchscreen based MP3 player, with a touchscreen gesture based player. Twelve blindfolded participants, and one visually impaired person, were able to operate both players, though there were problems with short impact related operations in the gesture player. From our results we provide guidelines for future designers, to help them exploit the potential of touchscreen technology for visually impaired people.
Despite growing awareness of the accessibility issues surrounding touch screen use by blind people, designers still face challenges when creating accessible touch screen interfaces. One major stumbling block is a lack of understanding about how blind people actually use touch screens. We conducted two user studies that compared how blind people and sighted people use touch screen gestures. First, we conducted a gesture elicitation study in which 10 blind and 10 sighted people invented gestures to perform common computing tasks on a tablet PC. We found that blind people have different gesture preferences than sighted people, including preferences for edge-based gestures and gestures that involve tapping virtual keys on a keyboard. Second, we conducted a performance study in which the same participants performed a set of reference gestures. We found significant differences in the speed, size, and shape of gestures performed by blind people versus those performed by sighted people. Our results suggest new design guidelines for accessible touch screen interfaces.
This paper presents a user-based pilot evaluation with visually-impaired users, which compares three different interaction paradigms when dialing a phone number on a touchscreen device. Our proposal based on the coupling of gesture recognition and vocal synthesis seems to offer users an easy, efficient and pleasurable alternative for entering numbers, without cognitive overload.
The current paper presents the concept of ÆGIS Integrating Project (Grant Agreement: 224348), which aims to embed support
for accessibility into every aspect of ICT-including the pre-built user-interface components, developer’s tools, software
applications and the run-time environment, and via embeddable assistive technologies. ÆGIS is a 3,5 years project, aiming
to constitute a breakthrough in the eInclusion area, through the development of an Open Accessibility Framework, upon which
open source accessibility interfaces and applications for the users as well as accessibility toolkits for the developers will
be built. Three mainstream markets are targeted, namely the desktop, rich Internet applications and mobile devices/applications
market segments.
Mobile devices with multi-touch capabilities are becoming increasingly common, largely due to the success of the Apple iPhone
and iPod Touch. While there have been some advances in touchscreen accessibility for blind people, touchscreens remain inaccessible
in many ways. Recent research has demonstrated that there is great potential in leveraging multi-touch capabilities to increase
the accessibility of touchscreen applications for blind people. We have created No-Look Notes, an eyes-free text entry system
that uses multi-touch input and audio output. No-Look Notes was implemented on Apple’s iPhone platform. We have performed
a within-subjects (n = 10) user study of both No-Look Notes and the text entry component of Apple’s VoiceOver, the recently released official
accessibility component on the iPhone. No-Look Notes significantly outperformed VoiceOver in terms of speed, accuracy and
user preference.
While many of the issues that are being raised in relation to mobile web accessibility are similar or the same to those that have been promoted over the past few years in relation to mainstream web accessibility, that doesn't necessarily mean that we're simply going over old material. Rather, it provides a jumping off point for mobile web accessibility. In turn, the differences in emphasis which result from the specific constraints of mobile devices could be crucial in highlighting some aspects of accessibility which, until now, have been neglected.
The Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University has developed a set of seven Principles of Universal Design that may be used to guide the design process, to evaluate existing or new designs, and to teach students and practitioners. This article presents preceding design guidelines and evaluation criteria, describes the process of developing the Principles, lists The Principles of Universal Design and provides examples of designs that satisfy each, and suggests future developments that would facilitate applying the Principles to assess the usability of all types of products and environments.
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