When accessibility meets usability

Making a resource or facility “accessible” to persons with disabilities does not necessarily make it “usable” to all such members of the population. The authors present some valuable lessons learned by National Science Foundation researchers and educators striving to make engaging activities and inviting curricula inclusive of all students, regardless of ability. Published online: 9 April 2002     

A decision support system for usability evaluation of web-based information systems

In this study, a decision support system (DSS) for usability assessment and design of web-based information systems (WIS) is proposed. It employs three machine learning methods (support vector machines, neural networks, and decision trees) and a statistical technique (multiple linear regression) to reveal the underlying relationships between the overall WIS usability and its determinative factors. A sensitivity analysis on the predictive models is performed and a new metric, criticality index, is devised to identify the importance ranking of the determinative factors. Checklist items with the highest and the lowest contribution to the usability performance of the WIS are specified by means of the criticality index. The most important usability problems for the WIS are determined with the help of a pseudo-Pareto analysis. A case study through a student information system at Fatih University is carried out to validate the proposed DSS. The proposed DSS can be used to decide which usability problems to focus on so as to improve the usability and quality of WIS.     

UWIS: An assessment methodology for usability of web-based information systems

A methodology for usability assessment and design of web-based information systems (UWIS) is proposed. It combines web-based service quality and usability dimensions of information systems. Checklist items with the highest and the lowest contribution to the usability performance of a web-based information system can be specified by UWIS. A case study by a student information system at Fatih University is carried out to validate the methodology. UWIS reveals a strong relationship between quality and usability which is assumed to exist by many researchers but not experimentally analyzed yet. This study depicts a strong relevance between web-based service quality and usability of web-based information systems. UWIS methodology can be used for designing more usable and higher quality web-based information systems.     

A unified methodology for the evaluation of accessibility and usability of mobile applications

This article reports a unified methodology developed to evaluate the accessibility and usability of mobile computing applications, which is intended to guarantee universal access as far as possible. As a basis for the methodology, this paper presents an analysis of the accessibility guidelines, conducted to take into account the specificity of mobile systems, as well as a set of usability heuristics, specifically devised for mobile computing. Finally, it presents the results of the application of the proposed methodology to applications that have been semi-automatically developed by the MAIS Designer, a new design tool that provides applications suited to different mobile devices.     

An approach to usability evaluation of e-learning applications

Despite recent advances of electronic technologies in e-learning, a consolidated evaluation methodology for e-learning applications is not available. The evaluation of educational software must consider its usability and more in general its accessibility, as well as its didactic effectiveness. This work is a first step towards the definition of a methodology for evaluating e-learning applications. Specific usability attributes capturing the peculiar features of these applications are identified. A preliminary user study involving a group of e-students, observed during their interaction with an e-learning application in a real situation, is reported. Then, the proposal is put forward to adapt to the e-learning domain a methodology for systematic usability evaluation, called SUE. Specifically, evaluation patterns are proposed that are able to drive the evaluators in the analysis of an e-learning application.     

Comparative usability evaluation

This paper reports on a study assessing the consistency of usability testing across organisations. Nine independent organisations evaluated the usability of the same website, Microsoft Hotmail. The results document a wide difference in selection and application of methodology, resources applied, and problems reported. The organizations reported 310 different usability problems. Only two problems were reported by six or more organizations, while 232 problems (75%) were uniquely reported, that is, no two teams reported the same problem. Some of the unique findings were classified as serious. Even the tasks used by most or all teams produced very different results - around 70% of the findings for each of these tasks were unique. Our main conclusion is that our simple assumption that we are all doing the same and getting the same results in a usability test is plainly wrong.     

Comparative usability evaluation

This paper reports on a study assessing the consistency of usability testing across organisations. Nine independent organisations evaluated the usability of the same website, Microsoft Hotmail. The results document a wide difference in selection and application of methodology, resources applied, and problems reported. The organizations reported 310 different usability problems. Only two problems were reported by six or more organizations, while 232 problems (75%) were uniquely reported, that is, no two teams reported the same problem. Some of the unique findings were classified as serious. Even the tasks used by most or all teams produced very different results – around 70% of the findings for each of these tasks were unique. Our main conclusion is that our simple assumption that we are all doing the same and getting the same results in a usability test is plainly wrong.     

Electronic voting eliminates hanging chads but introduces new usability challenges

The arrival of electronic voting has generated considerable controversy, mostly about its vulnerability to fraud. By comparison, virtually no attention has been given to its usability, i.e., voters’ ability to vote as they intend, which was central to the controversy surrounding the 2000 US presidential election. Yet it is hard to imagine a domain of human–computer interaction where usability has more impact on how democracy works. This article reports a laboratory investigation of the usability of six electronic voting systems chosen to represent the features of systems in current use and potentially in future use. The primary question was whether e-voting systems are sufficiently hard to use that voting accuracy and satisfaction are compromised. We observed that voters often seemed quite lost taking far more than the required number of actions to cast individual votes, especially when they ultimately voted inaccurately. Their satisfaction went down as their effort went up. And accuracy with some systems was disturbingly low. While many of these problems are easy to fix, manufacturers will need to adopt usability engineering practices that have vastly improved user interfaces throughout the software industry.     

User-centered design and adaptive systems: toward improving usability and accessibility

Universal Access in the Information Society -     

New methods and technologies for enhancing usability and accessibility of educational data

Universal Access in the Information Society -     

Countering design exclusion: bridging the gap between usability and accessibility

It is known that many people are being excluded unnecessarily from using products, services and environments that are essential for supporting independence and quality of life. Such exclusion often arises from designers taking inadequate account of the end users functional capabilities when making design decisions. This paper addresses how traditional usability techniques can be extended to include accessibility issues by considering the spread of user functional capabilities across the population. A series of measures for evaluating the level of design exclusion based on those capabilities is also presented.     

Universities of the Kyrgyz Republic on the Web: accessibility and usability

Universal Access in the Information Society - Today the Internet is the easiest way to find information about any kind of organization, and the first impression about an organization is almost...     

Measuring and improving the quality of development processes based on usability and accessibility

Universal Access in the Information Society - Measurement of both usability and accessibility is an important concern in software development today. However, while a great amount of attention has...     

Cultural cognition in usability evaluation

We discuss the impact of cultural differences on usability evaluations that are based on the thinking-aloud method (TA). The term ‘cultural differences’ helps distinguish differences in the perception and thinking of Westerners (people from Western Europe and US citizens with European origins) and Easterners (people from China and the countries heavily influenced by its culture). We illustrate the impact of cultural cognition on four central elements of TA: (1) instructions and tasks, (2) the user’s verbalizations, (3) the evaluator’s reading of the user, and (4) the overall relationship between user and evaluator. In conclusion, we point to the importance of matching the task presentation to users’ cultural background, the different effects of thinking aloud on task performance between Easterners and Westerners, the differences in nonverbal behaviour that affect usability problem detection, and, finally, the complexity of the overall relationship between a user and an evaluator with different cultural backgrounds.     

Automatic support for usability evaluation

The main goal of the work is to propose a method to evaluate user interfaces using task models and logs generated from a user test of an application. The method can be incorporated into an automatic tool which gives the designer information useful to evaluate and improve the user interface. These results include an analysis of the tasks which have been accomplished, those which failed and those never tried, user errors and their type, time related information, task patterns among the accomplished tasks, and the available tasks from the current state of the user session. This information is also useful to an evaluator checking whether the specified usability goals have been accomplished