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| Contractual Date of Delivery to the EC: | 26th February 2004 (update) |
|---|---|
| Actual Date of Delivery to the EC: | 26th February 2004 |
| Editor: | Christophe Strobbe (KULRD) |
| Contributor(s): | Jenny Darzentas (AEGEAN), Colette Nicolle (LU), Jan Engelen (KULRD), Carlos A. Velasco, Yehya Mohamad (FIT), Gerhard Weber (MMC) |
| Workpackage: | 2 |
| Estimated person months: | - |
| Security: | Public |
| Nature: | Report |
| Version: | R |
| Total number of pages: | 80 (Adobe PDF version) |
This report presents current and future technology landscapes that can be affected by design for all in the field of ICT, and how these landscapes can affect the future graduate profile. It also presents an overview of current industry awareness about the topic, and a summary of the industry needs.
Keywords: Design for All, industry needs, graduate profile, curriculum.
This document describes the needs of the ICT industry to comply with Design for All for social, economic and/or legal reasons. It first attempts to describe a number of recent or emerging interaction technologies that can be affected by the incorporation of Design for All: accessibility guidelines and APIs, device independence, user and device profiles, the Semantic Web and metadata, and multimodality. The next section discusses the industry's awareness and knowledge (or lack of it) about DfA. On the one hand it enumerates reasons (whether good or bad) for not applying DfA, on the other hand it presents a few major industry players who have supported DfA for many years. The next section delves deeper into the needs of the industry. It discusses the industry's criticism of existing legislation, policies and standards, what academia and the disability community can do to support them, how some companies implement DfA, issues of cost and market size, and the ideal profile of graduates and employees. The last section makes a few suggestions for organizations promoting DfA.
The purpose of this document is to identify some technology landscapes that can influence the requirements for the graduate profile in the forthcoming years. The content of the deliverable reflects partially the brainstorming sessions of the first workshop organized by the network in Helsinki in February 2003, where industry and academia members exchanged experiences for two days. On top of it, we have added sections that aim to reflect problems faced by industry when adopting Design for All, extracted from network members experience, other projects and relevant publications.
It must be highlighted, that we are not aiming to identify the whole set of future needs of the ICT industry in general, as it lays outside the scope of the project, but to focus on the future needs of the ICT industry in the field of Design for All.
Design for All belongs to a group of design methodologies that try to cater for users with a wide range of qualities and capabilities. These methodologies could help to reduce the digital divide that exists between elderly people and people with disabilities on the one hand, and “information haves” on the other hand. Because Design for All takes these disadvantaged users into account, it is sometimes wrongly equated with design for the elderly or people with disabilities. However, this is only one of a number of reasons why the industry has not generally adopted Design for All. Few universities and high schools have integrated Design for All into their ICT curricula. It is still necessary to identify the core knowledge sets and skills, the components, the content and the appropriate educational methods for such curricula. Some of the findings in this report are based on publications about web accessibility, which can be seen as a subdomain of Design for All in ICT. In spite of the number of ideas and suggestions that came out of the workshop and the existing literature, only a small portion of these have direct relevance to curriculum development.
The term “Design for All” is similar to “Universal Design”. The first term is more popular in Europe, the second one in the USA. Many definitions have been given to these terms. The Center for Universal Design at the North Carolina State University provides the following definition:
Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. (Ron Mace)
The concept “Design for All” has given rise to many discussions, because designing a product or service that everybody would want to use seems an impossible task. As a consequence, new concepts, such as “inclusive design”, were introduced. “Inclusive design” is similar to “Design for All”, but the definition is less categorical with regard to potential users:
[inclusive design is] the design of mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible on a global basis, in a wide variety of situations and to the greatest extent possible without the need for special adaptation or specialised design. (Quoted in Gill, 2003)
Other related terms are “barrier-free design”, “lifespan design” and “accessible design”. Some accessibility experts stress that “usability is also an important aspect of accessibility” (Henry, 2002; p. 8), but this relation is problematic. During the first IDCnet workshop in Helsinki, one of the industry experts questioned the connection between usability and Design for All, saying that some mechanisms related to usability are not compatible with Design for All. Another related concept is assistive technology. There is a debate over the question whether the design of assistive devices is part of Design for All or not, which in turn leads to the question whether it should be part of design curricula. Some experts consider this question as fairly insignificant as long as the needs of people with disabilities are taken into account in the design process (Abascal, 2003). For a full discussion of the terminology, see (Tahkokallio, 2001) and (Darzentas, 2003; Appendix 1).
The Design for All or Universal Design philosophy embraces a wide range of design artifacts, including the built environment and landscape architecture, biomedical and rehabilitation engineering. The Center for Universal Design has also formulated seven principles of universal design that are often quoted on web sites.
The ICT market is changing so fast that ten years are considered as an eternity. It is essential for companies to be sensitive to changes and to be able to react quickly. Besides the highly publicised globalisation of markets, they also have to take into account the ageing of the population and the increasing respect for the diversity of consumers and their needs.
The ageing of the population in developed countries is a very important factor. The numbers published by the I~Design project about the situation in the United Kingdom are an excellent eye-opener:
The aging population is growing inexorably. By 2020, almost half the adult population in the UK will be over 50, with the over 80's being the most rapidly growing sector. With age comes an increasing divergence of physical capability. It will become increasingly important for industry to ensure that employees' working lives are not curtailed simply because of an inaccessible work-place. Avoidable premature medical retirement costs many large companies in excess of $200,000,000 per year, but not many companies are aware of the extent of this cost.(...)
New technology and products being developed by industry have the potential to improve quality of life and make working easier. However unless the technology is made available to everyone, then it also has the opportunity to alienate, so need to be as inclusive as possible. Many products continue to be designed to appeal to the younger generation and the lucrative, and growing, older market sector is being ignored. Consequently, large sections of the population are being excluded by industry attitudes. For example, of the FTSE 100 companies (the 100 largest companies traded on the London Stock Exchange) only 37% aim to produce products for the over-50's; 31% take end-user age into consideration when designing a new product or service; 29% agreed that aging will affect how they run as companies; and only 18% employ significant numbers of over-50's. (Keates, Lebbon & Clarkson, 2000)
Until now, people with disabilities have relied on assistive technologies to access information and communication technologies (see AbilityHub for an overview of these technologies). Most of these technologies are expensive and they are an additional cost on top of the mainstream products that everyone else uses. By applying Design for All to mainstream products and making them usable for the disabled and elderly, many additional costs may be avoided. However, there are a number of specially designed technologies (for example for Braille output) which can probably not be replaced by mainstream products. Some people expect that, as more Designed for All mainstream products become available, the market for these specialised technologies will shrink (Engelen, 2002).
Knut Nordby uses the usability pyramid as a metaphor to illustrate the role of Design for All (Nordby, 2003).
Figure 1: The usability pyramid
This pyramid represents all users of ICT products and services, with human abilities along the vertical axis, from good at the bottom to poor at the top. There is a wide base of users who can access all ICT products and services directly. Above that is a smaller section of users who can access products and services with some form of adaptation. Above this is a much smaller section of users who need some form of assistive technology. The small section at the top of the pyramid represents users who need personal assistance to access ICT products and services.
The
main goal of Design for All is “to push the boundary between 'Those who can use
all' and 'With adaptation' as far up as possible
” (Nordby, 2003):
The general public sees disability as an attribute of a person that may be either congenital or the result of ageing, a disease or an accident. This view is too static. As Poulson and Waddell (2001) have pointed out
disability is situation-specific. Disability is not an attribute of the individual - it is the product of the interaction between the individual and their environment. For example, someone who uses a wheelchair may be 'disabled' amongst a group of individuals climbing a mountain but perfectly 'able' amongst that same group of individuals sitting round a table having a discussion. For someone with profound hearing loss the situation may be totally the reverse. (Poulson & Waddell, 2001, p. 144.)
If we accept that disability is situation-specific, it becomes clear that Design for All does not only benefit "people with disabilities". Several examples from the built environment and transportation illustrate this point. Curb cuts, for example, do not only benefit people in wheelchairs, but also parents pushing prams, people with heavy luggage and roller-skaters. Low-floor buses help everyone to get on the bus faster, and make bus stops shorter. Related to this is the fact that many people who can benefit from Design for All, for example elderly computer users with limited vision, don't think of themselves as having a disability.
Within this section, we will try to outline briefly some technology landscapes that can be affected by the incorporation of Design for All in the process.
When describing future technology landscapes that can be influenced by Design for All, it is obvious that we must deal with interaction technologies, either at the software level, or at the hardware level.
In the latter, DfA must cope with the fact that the new devices that allow access to Information and Communication Products, Systems and Services are becoming smaller to support the “mobile” user (mobile phones or PDAs). Therefore, this landscape demands:
In regard to software-related technologies, we will describe in the following sections some relevant developments.
Since Section 508 came into force in the USA, there has been a growing awareness of web accessibility. However, Design for All encompasses much more than web accessibility and e.g. the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. First, the web application paradigm is not only used for public web sites, but also for e-learning applications, content management, document management and knowledge management systems. Second, not all information is available in HTML format; other formats, such as Microsoft's Office formats and Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF), should also be accessible. Finally, ICT encompasses much more than web applications: there are also desktop applications, and a growing variety of other applications that run on smaller devices such as cell phones and PDAs. Desktop applications written in C++, Visual Basic or Java require that the programmer uses specific libraries or methods to make them accessible, and even when they are accessible they are not necessarily user friendly.
In this regard, we must consider not only general software accessibility (Bergman and Johnson, 1995) but OS accessibility issues as key parts of the technologic landscape:
defines a contract between individual user-interface components that make up a Java application and an assistive technology that is providing access to that Java application”. The Java Accessibility API facilitates the creation of accessible applications with little extra effort and without much knowledge of assistive technologies or disabilities. The Java Access Bridge is a bridge between the native environment of assistive technologies and the Java Accessibility support available from within the Java Virtual Machine. The Java Accessibility Utilities enable assistive technologies to access Java applications that implement the Java Accessibility API. They can also help developers to check the accessibility of a user interface. IBM has published a long and detailed document on developing accessible Java applications. Sun also hosts a Java-access mailing list.
The Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) of the Word Wide Web Consortium also links
accessibility with device-independence. According to the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 1.0 “device-independent access means that the user may interact with the
user agent or document with a preferred input (or output) device - mouse, keyboard,
voice, head wand, or other
” (Chisholm, Vanderheiden & Jacobs, 1999).
Device independence is also supposed to facilitate the reuse of content for newer
types of devices, such as the wireless devices that are used in different
circumstances and have different possibilities than computers. However, it has been
pointed out that defining accessibility from the point of view of device-independence
can lead to conflicts with the needs of people with cognitive and learning
disabilities. For this type of users, textual display, as a device-independent form,
may be less accessible than visual display (Torenvliet, 2003). Also,
while the needs of wireless devices are being addressed quite rapidly, designers
continue to ignore the needs of people with disabilities (Milliman, 2002).
There is at least one success story of accessibility and device independence: in 1999, http://www.optavia.com was designed with accessibility and usability in mind, but without considering the possibility of access by new devices. In 2001, Optavia's president accessed the web site with a web-enabled mobile phone and was delighted to find that that the implementation of the accessibility guidelines also made the site work on a web phone (Henry, 2002; p. 18).
Also the World Wide Web Consortium has initiated activities in the Device Independence Activity geared towards seamless access to the web and authoring.
Users today access Information Services with a variety of devices and with different interaction modes that depend on personal characteristics (including disabilities) and on the context of usage. With the appearance of mobile devices, the industry has focused its efforts on the standardization of device characteristics thus giving to information providers some content adaptation facilities.
The Composite Capabilities/Preference Profiles framework (CC/PP; Klyne et al., 2003), offers the possibility to define user and device profiles for an adequate adaptation of content and presentation for Internet services. CC/PP is based upon RDF (Resource Description Framework; Lassila and Swick, 1999) a general-purpose metadata description language. RDF provides the framework with the basic tools for both vocabulary extensibility, via XML namespaces, and interoperability. RDF can be used to represent entities, concepts and relationships in the web. So far, industry effort is focused on the development of device profiles, like UAProf or User Agent Profile, by the Open Mobility Alliance (formerly the WAP-Forum) and targeted to mobile devices.
However, research efforts are active to complement device profiling with user profiling, providing a complete framework able to tackle accessibility issues (Velasco et al., 2004).
Since its invention, the web has been growing at an initially unexpected rate, based upon HTML. However, the semantic capabilities of HTML are very limited and do not allow to define and classify information, thus making searching and data-mining difficult. Therefore, one of the key activities in the future is related to the Semantic Web, in which XML and RDF play a key role.
The Semantic Web Activity of the World Wide Web Consortium defines it in the following way:
The Semantic Web is the representation of data on the World Wide Web. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which integrates a variety of applications using XML for syntax and URIs for naming.
The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.
(T. Berners-Lee et al., 2001)
The Semantic Web is also related to the existence of Metadata, Ontologies and Topic Maps.
According to Merriam-Webster, an ontology “is a particular theory
about the nature of being or the kinds of existents.
” This rather philosophical
definition can be extended to the web:
Ontology is the theory of objects and their ties. The unfolding of ontology provides criteria for distinguishing various types of objects (concrete and abstract, existent and non-existent, real and ideal, independent and dependent) and their ties (relations, dependences and predication).
Based on RDF, the DARPA Agent Markup Language + Ontology Inference Layer (DAML+OIL) provides a basic infrastructure that allows a machine to make the same sorts of simple inferences that human beings do. A set of DAML statements by itself (and the DAML specification) can allow to deduce another DAML statement whereas a set of XML statements, by itself (and the XML specification) does not allow to deduce any other XML statements. To employ XML to generate new data, knowledge embedded in some procedural code somewhere is needed, rather than explicitly stated, as in DAML. DAML was combined with a similar effort in this space more targeted to the web environment, Ontology Interchange Language (OIL), to form DAML+OIL.
Building upon the foundations of the DAML+OIL specification, the
W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) “is intended
to provide a language that can be used to describe the classes and relations between
them that are inherent in web documents and applications.
”
The Topic Map Standard “provides a standardized notation for interchangeably representing information about the structure of information resources used to define topics, and the relationships between topics. A set of one or more interrelated documents that employs the notation defined by this International Standard is called a 'topic map'. In general, the structural information conveyed by topic maps includes:
A topic map defines a multidimensional topic space - a space in which the locations are topics, and in which the distances between topics are measurable in terms of the number of intervening topics which must be visited in order to get from one topic to another, and the kinds of relationships that define the path from one topic to another, if any, through the intervening topics, if any.”
Topic maps were first formalized by the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 13250, based on SGML and HyTime. An adaptation to XML is being defined as XML Topic Maps (XTM).
Metadata is machine understandable information for the web. The acknowledged authority in this area is the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, where several documents and references are available.
The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. (Mark Weiser, 1991)
The research on Multimodal Interaction (MMI) aims at improving human-machine interaction by exploiting multiple modalities (gesture, speech, hearing, vision, touch) using the five human senses, and in many cases imitating the natural interaction between human beings. Researchers and designers are typically interested in developing new technologies for, e.g., gesture recognition, gaze tracking, force feedback applications or sonification.
Multimodal interfaces aim at integrating several communication means in a harmonious way and thus make computer behaviour closer to human communication paradigms, and therefore easier to learn and use.
In February 2002, the World Wide Web Consortium set up the Multimodal Interaction Activity to develop specifications that will extend the web user interface to allow multiple modes of interaction. The Multimodal Interaction working group will collaborate with other working groups, including the Voice Browser working group, which has already worked on requirements for multimodal interaction. The industry has submitted several specifications to the World Wide Web Consortium for consideration by the Multimodal Interaction working group. They include XHTML+Voice, SALT (Speech Application Language Tags) and InkXML.
It is beyond the reach of this deliverable to do a thorough review of all the relevant activities in this area. As an interesting starting point, we refer the reader to this compilation of ongoing and finished research activities:
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~ramesh/MultiVisResource.htm
User interface design, interaction design, user-centered design or inclusive design is always part of a larger process: a software or hardware development process. This development process is sometimes called a design method or a design methodology. The emergence and evolution of software development processes and software engineering is primarily a response to the so-called software crisis. The software crisis refers to the problem of producing systems on schedule and to specification. According to W. Wayt Gibbs' much-quoted statistics (Gibbs, 1994):
operating failures”;
Over the last thirty years, there have been many attempts to make software development more controllable: new programming languages, modelling languages, programming paradigms (e.g. object orientation), tools and development processes. According to Dianna Mullet, the two major causes of the software crisis are the following:
- Software development is seen as a craft, rather than an engineering discipline.
- The approach to education taken by most higher education institutions encourages that “craft” mentality. (Mullet, 1999)
Developers work like craftsmen: they rely on techniques that cannot be measured or reproduced. Engineering, on the other hand, relies on reproducible, quantifiable techniques. The development of new techniques and methods, such as CMM (Capability Maturity Model), Merise, UML (Unified Modelling Language), MDA (Model-Driven Architecture) and UP (Unified Process), is sometimes compared to the development of theories and techniques for industrial production in the 19th century (Fordism, Taylorism, …). In this industrial vision of software development, each person has a specific role in a production chain (Chabrier, 2003). This evolution is mainly driven by the urge to create robust, reliable and maintainable software, not by the need to produce software that is accessible or easier to use. Handbooks on software engineering devote little to no attention to interaction design or user-centered design, even though they recognise that to satisfy the user's needs, it is important to create a shared understanding of the problem being solved.
There are several reasons why software and other ICTs are often difficult, unpleasant to use and inaccessible:
a spread that can be smeared over any design, however dreadful, with good results if the spread is thick enough” (Appendix M of Lewis & Riemann, 1994).
According to Mullet, computer science education in most institutions teaches a “product orientation” rather than teaching software engineering skills: students are concerned with the final outcome of their assignments (does the program run efficiently, does it use the best possible algorithm?), while the focus should be on the process:
The focus should be on the complete process from beginning to end and beyond. Product orientation also leads to problems when the student enters the work force–not having seen how processes affect the final outcome, individual programmers tend to think their work from day to day is too “small” to warrant the application of formal methods. To become effective software engineers, students must be taught how the process and product interact. They need to see how a good process repeatedly results in a good product. Software process engineering, is, unfortunately, not taught until very late in a computer science student’s academic career (usually in graduate school), or in company sponsored classes on the job. (Mullet, 1999).
In addition, the education of software engineers should also include methods for testing. Such testing methods should address
Accessibility can be seen as a subset of a more general goal: usability. For example, in the context of web development, important elements of usability are (Henry, 2002):
However, many designers and developers were introduced to accessibility as a consequence of legislation, and their focus is often limited to meeting standards and guidelines.
Many websites claim to be “accessible” but are very difficult to
use for people who have a visual impairment. For example, it may be possible for a
blind user to access all the text on a website, but the process of placing an order is
so complicated that the shopper eventually gives up (RNIB,
2002). This means that implementing the accessibility guidelines is not enough
to ensure that people with disabilities can make full use of ICT.
The inclusion of users with disabilities at every stage is a much better way to ensure
that the resulting product or service is both fully accessible to and usable by people
with disabilities. However, some experts do not believe that there is a natural
synergy between accessibility and usability. While Joe Clark sees only one area in web
development where usability has a noticeable negative influence on accessibility and
vice-versa (namely navigation), some usability experts do not believe it is possible
to design a web interface that suits the needs of everyone. Research in user
requirements shows that everyone does not want the same thing, and the “web
experience should be delivered in the way the users want
” (according to Catriona
Campbell of The Usability Company). On the other hand, any interface should be
consistent in its design: “When we start to offer interfaces that work in different
ways we start to force different groups of people learn different ways of doing
things. The aim should be to allow site users to do what ever they want while offering
a user experience that is as consistent as possible
” (Simon Norris of Nomensa; see
RNIB, 2002).
The DASDA project identified three major obstacles to a broad implementation of Design for All (DASDA Newsletter, November 2002):
While lack of awareness is no doubt an obstacle, research by the I~Design project suggests something more serious. Keates, Lebbon and Clarkson found a number of misconceptions concerning Design for All that may serve as arguments against it or that may lead to design that favours one disability while causing new problems for other disabilities.
The I~Design project wanted to examine the prevailing industry attitudes and identify the barriers to the uptake of Universal Design. In October 1999 the project was launched with a workshop with the aim to assess the level of industry awareness of the needs of the disabled and elderly communities and their openness to Design for All. There were over 150 participants with representatives from a wide range of companies, including: British Telecom, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Omron Corporation, NatWest Bank and Tesco (Keates, Lebbon & Clarkson, 2000).
The initial stance of most of the industrial participants was that they were willing to implement Universal Design providing that it was either easy to do, or that a consultancy would do it for them, and providing that it did not increase the cost of the product or service. There did not appear to be widespread acceptance of the need for Universal Design training programs for designers or an appreciation of the potential increased market of more accessible products. The concept of 'undue burden' appeared to be anything that would cost more than the able-bodied version.
Stereotyping was also a very common problem. The misconception that designing for universal accessibility was a code-word for designing for the elderly and disabled only, and that this represented designing for the institutionalized. There was little understanding of aging as a gradual process that creeps up on everyone. One transport company had claimed to have made most of their buses more accessible by including spaces for wheelchairs on the lower deck of their double-decker buses. This was perpetuating the image of someone who is physically impaired being a wheelchair user. A walking-stick user, however, commented that this measure actually made the buses less accessible to her and others like her, who outnumber the wheelchair users, because there were fewer seats downstairs, making it necessary for her to climb to the narrow, twisting stairs to the upper deck.
However, encouragingly, there were also success stories to report. Tesco have redesigned their shopping trolleys to be shallower and more maneuverable. OXO have developed the highly acclaimed GoodGrips range of kitchen accessories. The success of these products shows that there is a demand for more accessible items, but industry is being slow to respond. The common thread behind these is that the drive has been top down, from the senior management, rather than from the bottom up, driven by designer knowledge and training. This suggests that the best way to encourage the uptake of Universal Design may be to persuade senior management of the need for it.
However, awareness of the need to design for increased accessibility is not necessarily a guarantee that the goal will be achieved. In Rehabilitation Robotics, a field dedicated to design for the disabled, products have often failed because of lack of usability and accessibility (5). It is essential that designers are adequately equipped to implement Universal Design. In the second half of the I~Design workshop a number of design consultancies ran break-out sessions on designing products for the physically impaired. Those that were successful used empathic, user-centred approaches, such as design by story-telling and body-storming. Less successful were the groups who tried to design without any attempt at empathy with the end users.
Other key results from the workshop included the importance of removing stigma from products designed to be more accessible. This is where both Tesco and OXO appear to have had the most success. By treating their designs as being simply more accessible mainstream products, rather than specifically developed for individual user populations, they have developed products that are genuinely more inclusive.
(Keates, Lebbon & Clarkson, 2000)
The I~Design project also identified some common issues regarding inclusive design in the United Kingdom and the U.S. (Dong, Keates, & Clarkson, 2003):
There were also differences between the U.S. and the U.K.: in the U.S. legislation was considered the most important factor which resulted in consideration of the needs of people with disabilities. However in the U.K. legislation is seen as only providing a basic platform. The study also identified a number of strategies to facilitate the adoption and successful practice of inclusive design, for example, better awareness of inclusive design, and better design tools, including more comprehensive statistical and market data.
Greg Lowney (Microsoft) has also given a short description of the barriers to the
adoption of Design for All: “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.
” (Universal Design Discussion)
According to
Professor Patricia Moore from Arizona State University, “Corporate America's
report card on inclusive design is not looking so good
” (Moore, 2003).
In a study of 125 companies to test their attitudes towards inclusivity in products
and services, the companies' web sites were sent a single consumer inquiry: “Do
you offer universally designed products for older consumers or people with ability
concerns.” Only 12 out of the entire sample made any mention of universality or
accessibility on their web site. The question this study raised was “How can the
consumer benefit or learn if they do not come across universal design on the web?
”
Moore's study suggests that “universal design is again becoming narrowly
defined in terms of accessibility and mobility - much of it tied to the ADA - rather than being part of a
broader design approach.
”
A number of major industry players, such as Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Sun, have been supporting Design for All for many years, and they use the terms “accessibility” and “Design for All” when they present their efforts in this area. Other companies, however, carefully avoid terms such as “barrier-free design” and “products for seniors” because of the stigma attached to them. Bosch, for example, prefers the term “easy to use”. NTT Docomo advertised its F671iS cell phone, which was the result of many interviews with varied user groups and which had several accessibility features, as a “cool” product instead of one for elderly people (Sekine & Sakakibara, 2003; p.151).
Industry acts in a playing field that has certain rules and those rules are set by society. Some playing fields are more regulated others less regulated - the telecoms playing field is very much regulated. Representatives of industry sometimes say, just tell us what the rules are and we will play by the rules as long as the rules are the same for everybody. (Lindström, 2001; p. 77)
The above quote, when taken out of its context, gives the impression that the
industry is perfectly willing to implement Design for All and that all that is
required is legislation. The necessity of legislation is also confirmed in a negative
way by Osmund Kaldheim, Norway's Deputy Minister of Social Affairs. In an
interview, he said that one of the reasons for bringing up anti-discrimination
legislation in his country is “sheer despair and frustration at the fact that so
little has been introduced so far
” (Bendixen, 2002; p. 9).
Although legislation has a very strong awareness-raising effect, it is not always
regarded as a good incentive. Ronald Milliman conducted a study on the accessibility
of web sites in the private sector and asked web designers and web masters: “What
incentives would work best for achieving compliance to accessibility standards?
”
The possible choices and their respective rates of response show that legal penalties
are the weakest incentive of those that were suggested.
Perrett cites an example of
a company that “has an ambitious and developing strategy of service provision for
disabled customers, but felt that the timing was perhaps not right, citing, amongst
other things, uncertainty about the nature and extent of the legislative regime that
will emerge from the Communications Bill
” (Perrett, 2001; p. 51).
Although his article is about telecoms and the example refers to a mobile supplier and
the Communications Bill, it is conceivable that similar attitudes exist in the web
domain and with laws that are relevant to web accessibility.
Developers and designers are generally willing to take on a challenge, but there are few testimonials of their views on the technical feasibility of Design for All. The questionnaire used in Milliman's study did not even ask whether technical barriers were the cause of inaccessible web sites. An extreme view on the feasibility of Design for All was formulated by Christian Lindholm, Nokia's Director for User Interfaces:
Design for All? There is no such thing! Could you imagine a pair of shoes being designed in such way that everybody would want to wear them? (Agergard, 2000)
During the first IDCnet workshop in Helsinki, Klaus-Peter Wegge of Siemens said that in Germany, blind persons often use cell phones from Siemens (because of the sound cues), whereas persons with other visual impairments tend to use cell phones from Nokia (because of the readability of the screens). On the other hand, David Dzumba's presentation at the COST219bis Conference in December 2001 shows that Nokia has made considerable efforts to improve the accessibility of a number of products. It is striking, however, that Dzumba uses the term “accessibility” instead of “Design for All” and that the term “inclusive design” figures only in the title of his presentation.
Sometimes, the guidelines or standards which must be
implemented are considered too complex. For example, there are web masters who find
the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines “too complex, too detailed and not
accessible enough for their knowledge of the subject
” (Graziani, 2001).
Related to this problem is the difference between the tools and procedures for
creating and maintaining web sites and those for removing accessibility barriers.
There are many tools that enable authors and web developers to create and maintain web
pages without knowledge of the underlying languages, but evaluation and repair tools
are not as user friendly as authoring tools, the repair process cannot be automated
and the tools require an adequate knowledge of the technical aspects (Graziani).
In the ICT field, companies are often dependent on other companies or communities that they cannot influence. For example, software manufacturers cannot influence the operating system (which is Microsoft Windows in most cases). Some have looked into the possibilities of Open Source software, because it is possible to influence it to some extent.
Design-for-All advocates sometimes portray design for all as cost-free,
whereas many people in the industry see it as having extra costs in design resources
that are hard to justify, both internally in the struggle for resources and externally
in the market. “Would consumers see enough difference in value to pay an additional
price? Even the perception of additional cost was important for them [people from the
industry] to manage.
” (Universal Design Research Project)
This contradiction suggests several issues: industry wants to know the real cost of design-for-all and find accurate figures on market size (figures are now available on different locations for different types of disabilities instead of one location for all the info). Perrett, by contrast, claims that companies have got statistics and information about the numbers and spending power of disabled people and about the numbers of disabled people who use telecoms (Perrett, 2001; p. 52).
One thing that will drive industry to accept anything, whether it is Design for All or whatever, is money. There are two aspects to this. You have to try to bring it home to industry, looking at disability, for instance, that if they do it, they will make money. That is the business case. You also have to bring home to them the fact that if they don't do it, it will cost them money. And it will cost them money in two ways. One, in lost market share to the companies that actually do it and two, in terms of payment for litigation, as that must come. (Lindström, 2001; p. 76)
There are two driving forces. Legislation is one and profit is another. It is not very interesting for a company to know that 10% or 20% of the population are disabled. They need more precise figures about a specific market such as 17-24 year olds, single or married, etc. They are focussed very precisely on these groups where they think they can earn a lot of money. One has to apply that philosophy also to the group of disabled people and then one will find that, unfortunately, the groups are not that large and the companies have to consider whether it is worthwhile from the economic point of view to make an investment, to conquer that little share. You have to educate people in the company, the marketing personnel, the people in the shops and everyone; it is a huge extra cost to do this. (Lindström, 2001; p. 77)
The I~Design project “seeks
to promote Universal Design by providing industrial decision makers with mechanisms
to: assess the market size for new products, based on the whole population as opposed
to the young and able-bodied; offer designers the guidance required to design for
these markets; and understand the significance of age and capability related factors
”
(Keates, Lebbon & Clarkson).
Chapter 2 of Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites discusses a number of myths about accessibility, including its costs. He admits that accessibility is expensive.
Yes, it is - for a large site and if you do it after the fact. Retrofitting always costs more, even at the level of adding a dimmer switch in your house. In all other cases, access may cost, but it is not necessarily expensive. In compensation, you gain a new audience. (Clark, 2003a; p. 9)
Clark refers to the Sydney Olympics case, in which the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games claimed that adding simple access features to its database-generated web pages would cost 2.8 million Australian Dollars. This figure is much higher than the tens of thousands of extra expenditures estimated by the expert witnesses. Building accessibility into the project from the beginning would have added 2% to the cost, according to the experts. However, many (most?) commercial web sites were not designed with accessibility in mind and will need retrofitting, unless the web masters of those sites postpone adding access features until the next big redesign. Clark points out that for every retrofitted page, the developer must evaluate the page's condition and make informed decisions to fix problems. This process is not easy and cannot be automated, but accessibility advocates are often hesitant to admit this (Clark, 2003a; p. 339).
On the other hand,
Clark points out that developers do many other things (custom-coding scripts,
designing graphics and rollovers, creating animated GIFs, etcetera)
without asking who benefits from it, but just because the client decided they were
worth the money. “If you're willing to go to all that trouble, what's wrong
with incorporating access techniques into your development cycle?
” (Clark,
2003a; p. 11)
In spite of the importance of commercial viability in the discussions quoted above, there have been cases where this issue was not a barrier. For example, when one of the departments of Nokia in the U.S.A. wanted to start its first accessibility initiative, top management was in favour of this, although there was no expectation of significant return-on-investment (Dzumba, 2001).
Some of the preceding paragraphs are about web accessibility, but it is reasonable to extrapolate some of the arguments to Design for All in general.
During the Helsinki workshop, Klaus-Peter Wegge, who leads Siemens' Accessibility Competence Center, enumerated the characteristics of what he called “the battlefield of DfA”:
Some of these characteristics make operating on an international market difficult, some add to the price of the technology (certification), but the most important point is that none of these characteristics, in spite of all the good intentions, is beneficial to disabled persons.
Recent years have seen a new awareness by the government and new laws. The USA are several years ahead of Europe, and the response of the industry to Section 255 and Section 508 provides some clues about the needs of the industry in Europe. For example, before Section 508 went into effect, industry were demanding to know what was available for them to learn how to comply (Kaplan, 2001; p. 44). They needed to know how Section 255 and Section 508 were going to be implemented and what the government was going to do to assist them to understand how to undertake implementation (Kaplan, 2001; p. 42).
Understanding the law is only part of the problem. American regulations differ from those in Europe, and there are differences between European countries. ICT products and services, however, are likely to be distributed or accessed across borders, so the industry would welcome harmonisation.
The Council of the European Union's Resolution on “eAccessibility” - improving the access of people with disabilities to the Knowledge Based Society (doc. 5165/03, 2-3 Dec 2002), under section II, paragraph 2, letter a, calls on the member states and invites the Commission “to consider the provision of an “eAccessibility mark” for goods and services which comply with relevant standards for eAccessibility”.
This idea is taken up by the recently established EuroAccessibility consortium that aims at streamlining web testing procedures and unifying the way accessibility logos are attributed. On a longer term, EuroAccessibility also wishes to certify webbuilders that have proven their ability to produce accessible websites.
With regard to web accessibility, it is possible to distinguish at least three types of policies (Brewer and Chuter):
The first approach is more common; examples are Australia, Canada and the United States. Some governments combine the three approaches, e.g. in the United States. Legislation in Portugal specifically focuses on web accessibility.
The requirements for web accessibility can also differ: some governments reference the WAI guidelines generally, some specify the documents and the version number, and some write their own version of web accessibility guidelines. In Germany, for example, the Barrierefreie Informationstechnik Verordnung (Decree on Barrier-Free Information Technology) states that its guidelines are based on those formulated in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 published in 1999 (BITV). The most important difference is a reduction of the number of priority levels from three to two: in general, WCAG priority 1 and 2 have been combined into one level; WCAG priority 3 roughly corresponds to the second priority level in the German decree. An example of the first approach can be found in the eEurope2002 plan which led to a “Council of the European Union” decision in December 2002.
The industry also criticizes how laws are enforced. There are several aspects to this. Firstly, legislation should be more general than particular. It should define goals, but not how they should be implemented. For example, the law may demand that all signs in buildings must be available in Braille instead of demanding that they be in a form that is accessible for blind persons. Another example: the law may demand that all phones should be TTY compatible. The first example is undesirable because not all blind persons know Braille. The second example is undesirable because it increases the price of all telephones, even for those who are not interested in TTY. Moreover, TTY is becoming replaced by fax, SMS and instant messaging. Instead of laying down specific technical requirements, laws could be frameworks that refer to standards and guidelines, which can be more easily adapted to technical evolutions. On the other hand, one of the conclusions of the Helsinki workshop was that legislation should be binding.
Companies will want to know what laws apply to whom, how laws will be enforced etc.
According to a survey conducted by Trace Research & Development Center, “[a]lmost
all interviewees wanted closer ties to organizations performing research and
development in UD or accessibility. Specific comments were directed toward making
research results easier to find, improved market research, and industry participation
in the research agenda so that more economically viable products would result. Human
factors researchers in academia and elsewhere should note this interest.
”
(UDRP)
According to the survey by
Trace Research & Development Center quoted above, “[a]lmost all interviewees
had strong opinions on what people outside their company could do (or stop doing!)
that would support their own efforts to implement UD
”.
According to Perrett a mutual understanding of the issues faced by both sides [the
industry and disabled people] is important. To facilitate this, it may be useful to
form an industry forum “where key players in the industry can discuss mutually
beneficial solutions to issues affecting their disabled customers”. “Also, industry
will probably want to talk about a common approach to issues that affect all disabled
people, perhaps even to discuss issues where the interests of one group of disabled
people might conflict with those of others” (Perrett, 2001; p. 52). Deborah Kaplan
also noted that “It is very important that there are ways for disabled consumers and
activists to get together with the IT industry and with government policy makers to
address this jointly and together” (Kaplan, 2001; p. 44).
During the Helsinki workshop, several participants pointed out that there are many guidelines, standards, books and reports, which results in a big “pile of paper”. This situation was criticized for several reasons. Firstly, creating more documents does not work; what is needed is a usable format for the existing information. Secondly, standards should be feasible, viable and desirable, and this can only happen if the industry is represented in standardization committees. Lastly, there is no need for more guidelines and standards but for better guidelines that help the industry understand what needs to be done. The last two criticisms were countered by one of the project officers of the European Commission, who said that it is very difficult to convince industry representatives to participate in standardization activities; the industry is only interested if there is relevant legislation.
What are “better guidelines”? One disadvantage of a set of guidelines such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is that the classify accessibility issues according to their severity but give no clue to the frequency of these issues in the real world. It is conceivable that 80% of web accessibilty problems are caused by 20% or less of the check points identified by WCAG, so developers would want to address those issues first. Research in this area would benefit both developers and end-users. Developers would know what to focus on first instead of solving issues that help very few people. This would make investments in accessibility more cost-efficient. Developers using WCAG would also benefit from a test suite that that screen reader vendors, authoring tool manufactures, web accessibility checkers/repairers, and web developers can compare against (Jenkins, 2003).
Standards and guidelines are sometimes developed by groups that are not representative of the field. For example, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines affect many overlapping fields of expertise, including page structure, multimedia, information architecture and disability-specific issues, but actual experts in many relevant fields are not involved in the development process of WCAG (Clark, 2003b).
Jef Raskin has pointed out that interface guidelines (e.g. those by Microsoft and Apple) sometimes give advice that is demonstrably wrong. This is often because the organisation wants to maintain compatibilty with older versions of the interfaces and because of the misconception that users will protest against the disappearance of old, familiar interface elements (Raskin, 2000).
Companies that take design for all seriously generally set up special design for all services. For example, IBM has tree accessibility centres, and Siemens has an Accessibility Competence Center. 'Advocates' or 'evangelists' from such a group try to convince others or remind them about design for all in everyday projects.
In chapter 11 of Constructing Accessible Web Sites (Jim Thatcher et al., 2002), Mark Urban discusses “Implementing Accessibility in Enterprise”. One of the best ways to implement an accessibility solution is to set up a group or organization that will handle and support accessibility issues. This group should cut across departmental lines to maximize knowledge and awareness of accessibility (Urban, 2002; p. 284).
Its ultimate goal should be to build a group of qualified people within the company who can manage and oversee accessibility projects, rather than overseeing them itself. To that end, the AO [accessibility organisation] should be a resource within the enterprise, not a controlling organization. Its management should be carefully structured and its members should have a mix of characteristics directly related to their role in implementing accessible web technology. The membership should mostly be drawn from departments that will use it, being mostly field personnel working on implementing access web technology. Most should only work in the group part-time, having their primary responsibilities in their departments, as their understanding of departmental needs may be invaluable in achieving successful integration of accessibility into your web technology. They should also have a commitment to implementing accessibility. (Urban, 2002; p. 284)
Judy Brewer, director of WAI, has suggested that the evaluation of web sites is better performed by a review team than by an individual, and has listed the areas of expertise that such teams should have (Brewer, 2002).
The INCLUDE project mentions the following benefits of Design for All for the industry (http://www.stakes.fi/include/pam1.html):
John M. Slatin and Sharon Rush summarize the usability studies by Donahue, Weinschenk and Nowicki (1999):
- Each dollar spent on usability returns $10-100 in product benefit.
- It can cost as much as 100 times less to fix usability problems before launching a product rather than after the launch.
- Usability improvements increase user productivity by an average of 25 percent, improve user morale, reduce documentation costs, reduce training costs, and reduce customer support costs.
- Usability engineering has demonstrated reductions in product development cost and time of 35-50 percent. (Slatin and Rush, 2003, p. 152)
However, Daniel Rosenberg, vice president of development for usability and interface design at Oracle Corporation, says that the literature and approach to usability ROI contains flaws, and that this works to the detriment of the usability profession. In a presentation to the BayCHI (the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the ACM special interest group on Human-Computer Interaction) he described seven myths on usability ROI (Sinkeviciute-Titus, 2003):
Generalization is valid.” Advocates present figures about user interfaces without mention whether they are talking about hardware or software, or whether the software is a web interface, a packaged application or an internal application.
Calculation of ROI from the Producer Perspective.” In the end, the consumer bears the costs, so costs should be calculated from the consumer perspective.
You Can Ignore the Other Factors.” UCD advocates ignore other factors (price of the product, size of the sales force, …) when they mention the influence of usability on the revenues generated by a new version of a product.
Analog Comparisons are Not Required.”.” Loss of online customers cannot be simply equated with loss of sales: some customers combine online searching with offline buying.
All Usability Dollars are Spent Effectively.”.” Rosenberg believes that the usability profession is not that effective in communicating the value of usability or in delivering value.
Executives will Believe Voodoo Economics.”
User Experience Resources will Reduce the Software Schedule.” Rosenberg said that he had never seen a product ship on time.
According to Rosenberg, there are three “laws of gravity
”
affecting ROI:
It is cheaper to fix problems early in the design process.”
Automation reduces complexity faster and in larger increments than UI design.”
Globalization reduces labor costs.”
Usability should be defined by how it contributes to the customer's success—Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)—instead of the producer's ROI: what does it cost for the customer to be successful (Sinkeviciute-Titus, 2003).
Others have warned against the tendency to over-measure: the various parts of a development process are so tightly integrated that awarding elements of return on investment to any particular contributor is very difficult (Adkisson, 2003).
Peter Conklin has developed a way to increase willingness to invest
in product improvement by replacing the emphasis on time to market by an emphasis on
time to break even. This can help in making people think differently about shipping
dates and their significance. Companies usually prefer a project that reaches the
market to one that takes longer. But the point of getting to the market is making
money, so a more important target date is the time when the product wins back its
development costs: the time to break even. According to Conklin, “anything that
increases the rate of product acceptance, that is, the growth of sales volume, will
shorten time to break even, and if the increase in acceptance is big enough, time to
break even may be shorter even if time to market is longer
” (Lewis and
Riemann, 1994). This argument can help user interface developers, because it
enables more rational discussions about extra development time.
Figures and statistics about disabilities are available, but the question is not whether people with disabilities present a big enough market but whether Design for All generate enough return on investments (or reduce TCO, see Rosenberg's comments above). During the first IDCnet workshop in Helsinki, Klaus-Peter Wegge of Siemens questioned the assumption that Design for All leads to bigger market shares. The USA are in many respects several years ahead of Europe, but there are no figures that prove that sales increase when products are designed for all. Although sales of assistive technologies have increased, this is not the case for ICTs that were designed to be accessible. According to Wegge, it is still necessary to prove the economic viability of Design for All. The examples that were cited during the Helsinki workshop came from transportation (low floor buses) and other domains that have nothing to do with ICT.
Advocates of accessibility or Design for All often make broad statements about market size. For example, Stephanidis and Emiliani point out that disabled and elderly people make up about 20% if the market in the European Union; moreover, with the ageing of the population, this share will grow to 25% by 2030 (Stephanidis and Emiliani, 2003). Figures like this look very impressive at first sight, but they ignore the complexity of the market. The following factors need to be taken into account:
the majority of working-age adults are likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology” (Forrester Research, 2004).
There are few sources of information about the industry needs with regard to the required Design for All knowledge and skill for designers and engineers. This section relies on information from related or broader domains and compares the findings with comments made during the Helsinki workshop.
In 1998, a workshop during the annual STIMDI conference (Swedish Interdisciplinary Interest Group for Human-Computer Interaction) reviewed the contents of HCI courses in Sweden. The workshop also addressed the promotion of HCI in the industry. One of the participants had practiced HCI education for industry for several years. This section summarizes his main points of view (Gulliksen & Oestreicher, 1999, p. 6):
Case studies (“sunshine and disaster histories”) are useful but difficult to find:
- It can be difficult to actually tell whether a project has succeeded or failed.
- Evaluation is often performed by others than those who have done the work.
- The industry does not want to get an image of a company that failed or shared a winning concept. (Gulliksen & Oestreicher, 1999, p. 6)
Work is currently taking place in this area which should help to fill this gap. For example, the RSA Inclusive Design Toolkit will later this year provide a unique resource for designers, students and business people (http://idesign.wiredesign.net/new).
It is useful to train the student's ability to see the benefits and drawbacks of everyday designs. For example, one can give them a small practical design task (e.g. design functional salt and pepper packages for airline passengers) and let them work simultaneously and independently of each other for 15 minutes. Then they can discuss each other's solutions and ideas. (This method is know as parallel design and is used to generate diversity in design solution; see Winberg, n.d.)
Another question is how one can teach innovation. Brainstorming is a useful technique for creativity. Observing how users actually use the system can make developers understand the benefits and drawbacks of their design and motivate them to correct it (Gulliksen & Oestreicher, 1999, p. 6). (These two methods were also mentioned by Johan Molenbroek during the Helsinki workshop.)
People educated in HCI in Sweden until 1998 mostly became teachers because of the increasing interest in the subject. Those who chose a commercial career usually ended up as consultants. However, there is a need for HCI education for people who end up in supervisory or strategic decision making situations (Gulliksen & Oestreicher, 1999, p. 6). (The same conclusion was drawn during the Helsinki workshop concerning design-for-all education.)
However, the HFES (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society) has published “Quick Tips for Finding A Human Factors/Ergonomics Job in Industry” that provide interesting hints:
Candidates must understand specifics about the employer's industry, but they should also be able to see the big picture involved in a project and to know how to apply human factors principles, frameworks, and techniques. Candidates should have a record of accomplishments, even while in graduate school, such as publications, presentations, and leadership assignments. In all cases, leadership and communication abilities are crucial.
(…)
Learn to manage your time efficiently, and set priorities for what you need to accomplish in and out of the classroom. In your industry career, you will frequently be working on multiple projects and will be required to set priorities in order to meet your deadlines.
Consider taking courses outside your major department that may help you in your career. Examples include computer science/software engineering, marketing, industrial design, or aviation, depending on your interests. In your career, you'll often be part of a multidisciplinary team, and having taken courses in other departments will prepare you for the different approaches others bring to the work. (…)
Be prepared to speak in many “languages.” You will often be working in multidisciplinary teams. If you are able to speak and understand the jargon of your teammates, you will have a much better chance of implementing user-centered design features into your product. For example, if you demonstrate a knowledge of coding concerns while working with software engineers, you will be far more successful than if you understand only the user interface.
(Young and Shapiro, 2001)
Although Design for All or accessibility are never mentioned, the relevance of some of the points quoted above was confirmed during the Helsinki workshop. Marja-Riitta Koivunen, representing the Education and Outreach Group of W3C WAI, presented the results of a mini-interview with a few people from industry about the kind of properties that are needed when doing DfA. These properties include:
(Koivunen, 2003; slide 9)
Marja-Riitta Koivunen also mentioned the knowledge and skills that are required for all employees (including managers), for evangelists and change agents, for designers and evaluators, and for developers (Koivunen, 2003; slides 5-8). Lilian Henze of P5-Consultants mentioned that professionals in human-centred design needed knowledge of ergonomics, product development and marketing. She also mentioned that their skills should go beyond traditional market research. Referring to a Bell curve that represented the diversity of users, she said that quantitative research is not sufficient: when one goes to the extremes of the Bell curve, it is possible to get a lot of qualitative information that is useful in the design process. She also pointed out that graduates should be aware of their responsibility in their future role in interdisciplinary teams (Henze, 2003). This has several implications for DfA education. Firstly, students are now mostly focused on their subjects instead of the people they will co-operate with later. Secondly, it would be useful to find out how students choose their subjects and to use this knowledge to find better ways to motivate them to study design for all.
Some companies incorporate accessibility or Design for All into their training for new employees. For example, at Nokia in the U.S.A., accessibility is one of the induction training modules and it is offered to all employees three times per year. This module includes a ten-minute video “Design for All”. In addition, there is also an employee manual “Meeting the Needs of a Diverse Marketplace” (Dzumba, 2001; PPT).
In their afterword to
About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design (2003), Alan Cooper and
Robert Reimann discuss the subject of training as a designer. They state that
interaction designers do not often come from the ranks of programmers, but nonetheless
need technical knowledge. Non-technical persons are less suited for this job, because
“it is not obvious what computers can do for us
” (Cooper & Reimann,
2003).
It is possible to pursue academic training, but interaction design is a new discipline that is taught at only a few institutions. There is no agreement on what the core knowledge sets and skills of an interaction design curriculum should be, or on how to approach the teaching of such a curriculum, although this is starting to change. Some of these programs were developed at art schools and tend to emphasize personal or brand expression rather than product definition and usability problems. Other interaction design programs are outgrowths of technical departments and concentrate more on technologies than on human goals. Programs that emphasize human-computer interaction techniques tend to concentrate more on cognitive theory and user research than on design methods and practices.
It is also possible to become an interaction designer through other paths, for example studio training combined with a sufficient breadth of courses (Cooper and Reimann cite art, business, humanities and science). However, there are a number of skills and attitudes that are difficult to teach, for example empathy with users and the ability to conceptualize working solutions. According to Cooper and Reimann, people considering to shift their career to interaction design should keep a few things in mind:
Designers seldom code”. Trying to do interaction design and development at the same time will be to the user's disadvantage. There is a conflict of interest.
Usability research is tremendously important, but it isn't design.” Usability research identifies problems but can only suggest solutions when working at the most detailed level. Interaction design requires the ability to envision and refine broad and detailed solutions. Persons who feel more at home with extracting facts from known solutions may find usability research a more natural choice.
Temperament is important. The best interaction designers are interested in everything and willing (even eager) to immerse themselves in unfamiliar territories to learn and absorb. They are also very concerned about people as individuals and the human condition in general.”
Interaction designers need to work closely with people in other roles in a larger team. In many cases, the interaction designer will also have the role of reminding other team members of thinking in a goal-directed fashion. (Cooper & Reimann, 2003, p. 502-504)
People with disabilities have difficulty finding jobs.
In 1994-1995, the Urban Institute conducted a survey in the U.S.A.,
which found that 79 percent of adults without disabilities were working at the time
they were interviewed and only 37 percent of those with disabilities were employed (Win
with Ability). The same survey also asked employers about the possible barriers
to employment and advancement of people with disabilities. Lack of related experience
and lack of required skills or training were seen as the biggest barriers. However,
according to the National Organization on Disability, “People with disabilities
have equal, or higher, job performance ratings, higher retention rates, and lower
absenteeism.
” (National Organization on Disability 2001, quoted in Moulton
et al, p. 12)
During the Helsinki workshop, one of the participants said that legislation about quota for employing people with disabilities has not worked. Employing people with disabilities is difficult (for reasons that were not mentioned during the workshop). On the other hand, Design for All benefits from involving disabled users, and for some companies it is best to do this inside the company, because they want to protect the innovations that are not yet on the market.
(Quoted from the DASDA website, at http://www.design-for-all.info/200035,14099925.xml)
“So how do I start to make Design for All a fact of life in my organisation? It's all very well having the ideas but putting them into practice won't be easy.”
Start with the ideas but follow with the practical steps that will ensure that Design for All is adopted in an appropriate manner:
Ensure that all relevant colleagues are aware of the importance of the subject, are full appraised of what you stand to gain by adopting Design for All and, just as important, what you could lose if you ignore the subject. You must be fully committed to the approach as an organisation if you are going to make it work for you.
Appoint one or more people to champion the subject within the organisation. Give them access to the people they need to guide and ensure they have the resources to make their case full and persuasively.
Place an obligation on those involved to include Design for All in new product/services specifications and to demonstrate that their work has been carried out according to the principles it embodies.
See that systems are created to monitor progress, examining all development and design work for positive Design for All attributes.
Ensure that validation work on the organisation's products and services includes achievement of Design for All principles. Measure, where possible, market effects of the inclusive approach and feed back into discussions on new products and their prospects.
(…)
Finally, congratulate yourself on seeing the commercial benefits of an approach that far too many still see as an imposition. Your efforts deserve praise, as well as the rewards that, without doubt, they will receive.
(Quoted from the DASDA website, at http://www.design-for-all.info/200039,14177299.xml)
Whether you know it or not there is a strong market demand for more inclusive design. Whether you see it or not, some of your competition is already improving its prospects by adopting a more inclusive approach to design. Plus, legislation is under discussion in Europe - following the moves in the US - to make inclusive design a feature of public purchasing. These are the facts that you need to understand and lay before your colleagues.
It is worth elaborating on certain aspects to provide the stimulus to action:
Demand - some 16 million people in the EU have hearing impairment, 3 million have visual impairment, 7 million have limited dexterity and 9 million have cognitive impairment; nearly 40% of people over the age of 50 have difficulty with small print; even allowing for duplication between categories, these are people who can be excluded from use of products or services; they need design that will include them and they will respond by purchasing.
Legislation - US public purchasing is now subject to inclusivity criteria based on legislation that equates discrimination against the disabled with discrimination on the grounds of race or gender; around 10% of IT sales are to US government departments; consideration of similar legislation has already started in the European Parliament and could affect future public procurement; those who cannot comply will be excluded.
E-commerce - trumpeted as the future for a significant proportion of sales activity, e-commerce operates through a medium that is accented towards the young and the able; those not schooled in IT, or working outside a context in which they can keep skills fresh, will not be part of the potential market; a decision to pursue e-commerce exclusively can be a decision to exclude a large number of potential customers unless web accessibility guidelines are followed.
Public awareness - the successful court challenge to the official web site for the Sydney Olympics illustrated that consumers are no longer prepared to be excluded; it is far better to be praised for inclusion than fined for exclusion.
Inaction is not an option for a number of different reasons. Action is made easier by the Design for All web site and the information, guidance and links to other resources to be found on it. The idea of being 'exclusive' can have attraction for a small number of customers; being inclusive has great attraction for many more.
DfA thought: 8.5% of men have some form of colour blindness, a constraint that cannot be seen by others. This can make the difference between seeing the 'buy now' button on your web site or seeing nothing. Can you afford that risk with the people you have worked so hard to bring to your web site?
One easily came away from the Helsinki workshop with the impression that the industry does not quite know what they need with regard to Design for All (except for a few enlightened individuals) and that they need to be educated. Awareness of accessibility and Design for All is growing, which is mainly due to legislation, but surveys have shown that there are still many barriers besides lack of awareness. The industry is much more willing to invest in new technologies (e.g. i-mode, MMS) and fancy web sites than in Design for All. To win over the industry, several things are necessary:
The next step for IDCnet is the identification of core knowledge sets and skills for DfA curricula. However, research in industry needs will continue, so that updated reports will form the baseline chapters for the second workshop.
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