Accessible Needfinding

AEIOU and Interviewing

Jennifer Mankoff

University of Washington

2025-02-03

Announcements

Learning Goals

  • Announcements

  • AEIOU

  • Accessible Study Planning

  • Document Accessibility

Quick Reminder

Link to these slides:

  • Turn on captioning
  • Turn on recording

Submitting your first assignment

  • Submit on canvas

Contribution statement

  • We don’t expect everyone to contribute equally to each assignment, but you should support each other
  • Don’t overthink it!
  • Submissions with a missing statement will not be graded

Contribution statement example

  • Name 1: 40%, researched the background of the problem, outlined the content of the document, wrote the first version of one paragraph, also selected the images to be included
  • Name 2: 15%, conducted 3 interviews and took notes
  • Name 3: 20%, wrote the first version of the background section, made sure the final version got submitted
  • Name 4: 25%, conducted 3 interviews (with Name 2) organized the group meeting, researched the background of the problem, contributed to the formatting of the text

This week

Time’s running out to meet your project mentors

  • You’ll need them to help with finding clients.
  • It’s important to reach out to them TODAY if you haven’t and schedule a meeting THIS WEEK.

Start recruiting clients to interview

Next week…

  • prepare for your first critique
  • End of week: interview clients

Where we are: Understand

Understanding ends in insight

understand create deliver
Develop empathy –> define ideate prototype –> test
  • Upcoming assignment
  • planning for initial need finding
  • AEIOU assignment

Next: Create

Creation ends in ideas

understand create deliver
Develop empathy –> define ideate prototype –> test

(design proposal)

AEIOU

Learning Goals

  • Announcements

  • AEIOU

  • Accessible Study Planning

  • Document Accessibility

AEIOU Method

A framework for organizing data collection and data analysis.

  • Activities: goal-directed sets of actions (1-3 tasks)
  • Environments: Where do the activities take place?
  • Interactions: Who are the players? What is the sequence?
  • Objects: What objects do they use and how? Are any of them accessibility tools?
  • Users: Who do you need to observe to understand?

How is Intersectionality missing from this framework?

(discuss)

Intersectionality? (1/2)

  • Activities: Pick 1-3 tasks
    • How, if at all, are clients’ racial or other identities harmed, or supported, during these activities?
  • Environments: Where do the activities take place?
    • What structural forces, or assumptions, are at play regarding client race, gender and/or disability status?
  • Interactions: Who are the players? What is the sequence?
    • What biases or assumptions might impact the client during these interactions?

Intersectionality? (2/2)

  • Objects: What objects do they use and how?
    • How are cultural identity, gender identity, and disability identity represented in these objects, if at all?
  • Users: Who do you need to observe to understand?
    • What sort of power differentials exist in these interactions?

Accessible Study Planning

Learning Goals

  • Announcements

  • AEIOU

  • Accessible Study Planning

  • Document Accessibility

Translating to Need-finding (1/4)

Participatory Design/Research

  • Emanates from design & technology field, has been specifically used in Assistive Technology & HCI research;
  • Also applied in education and healthcare settings; children & older adults

Translating to Need-finding (2/4)

Participatory Design/Research

  • Working directly with users (& other stakeholders) in the design of systems

Translating to Need-finding (3/4)

Participatory Design/Research

  • Working directly with users (& other stakeholders) in the design of systems

  • Users are actively involved in setting design goals and planning prototypes

    • Contrasts with methods where user input is sought only after initial concepts and prototypes have been produced (i.e. PD is more than user-testing)

Translating to Need-finding (4/4)

Participatory Design/Research

  • Working directly with users (& other stakeholders) in the design of systems

  • Users are actively involved in setting design goals and planning prototypes

  • Early and continual participation of intended users to produce better technologies that better suit the needs of users

Participatory Methods in A11y (1/3)

  • Aims to engage participants in the design, conduct and evaluation of products/research with the construction of non-hierarchical relations
    • Participants encouraged to own the outcome by setting the goals and sharing in decisions about processes
    • “Nothing about me, without me”

Participatory Methods in A11y (2/3)

  • Aims to engage participants in the design, conduct and evaluation of products/research with the construction of non-hierarchical relations
  • Ensures research topic is one that people with disabilities consider worthy of investigation
    • Asking people with disabilities to act as consultants or advisors to projects
    • Provision of support, training and payment so that people with disabilities can undertake their own research

Participatory Methods in A11y (3/3)

  • Aims to engage participants in the design, conduct and evaluation of products/research with the construction of non-hierarchical relations
  • Ensures research topic is one that people with disabilities consider worthy of investigation
  • Other methods
    • Narrative research: Life history, biography, oral history
    • Focus groups, interviews
    • Action Research

Accessible Participatory Methods

  • Accessibility doesn’t come by accident when planning studies
  • All research should be accessible research (regardless of if it is accessibility research)
  • You have to make your system accessible (using inspection techniques) before doing this (if you have one)
  • We will discuss accessibility for evaluators and for participants today

Study Planning Workflow

  • Identify stakeholders
  • Identify tasks
  • Assign Tasks
    • Access needs
    • Effects of familiarity
    • Personal preferences
    • Institutional constraints

An Example

Supposed you want to co-design a new directional control system for increased independence among paddlers who are blind.

a blind paddler in a solo outrigger canoe trains with the help of a special remote ruder control device visible as a red box on the beck of the canoe

Identify Stakeholders & Tasks

  • Stakeholders – Blind paddler and guide (and potential others more peripheral)
  • Tasks – one to three key activities
    • Help paddler with speed
    • Help paddler with direction
    • ??

Assigning tasks: considerations

  • Access needs
  • Effects of familiarity with the task
  • Personal preferences
  • Other institutional constraints

Accessible Study Planning Workflow

  • Plan Accommodations
  • Prepare Team
  • Reflect

Plan Accommodations

  • Communication: Need to support screen readers? interpreters? etc
  • Materials: Braille? Tactile graphics? sensory concerns?
  • Time: Does anyone on your team need to limit engagement length? Standing time? etc
  • Space: Do you need to be outdoors? Oriented to easily see or hear each other?

Further considerations

  • Ensuring that you address access needs and communication support from recruitment onward
  • When engaging with participants
    • Don’t be overly sensitive (don’t overcompensate)
    • Don’t rely on useless cues (audio/visual) to convey encouragement
    • Monitor participant fatigue and overall affect
    • Understand when to help and when to end a task if participants have trouble

Piloting can help

  • First, revisit accommodations plan
  • Print out accessible study materials, consent form, etc
  • Understand (and possibly prepare) the space that the team will work in
  • Have compensation ready

How to interview

  • Establish rap – just be friendly
  • Listen actively
    • Full attention
    • Show you are interested (nonverbal cues; questions)
    • Paraphrase to make sure you understood
    • Avoid jargon; be reflective

Interview structure

  • Ask an open ended question on the general topic (“how did you get interested in paddling”)
  • AEIOU questions
  • Share something you learned and ask if you understood

Reflection

After the interview meet as a team to discuss

  • Interview accessibility
    • Access Synergies
    • Access conflicts
    • Power Dynamics
  • Interview results (what you learned)

Let’s try it

  • Find a partner. Interview them about a holiday they celebrated while at UW
    • Activities: Focus on 1-3 things they did to celebrate
    • Environments: Where did they celebrate
    • Interactions: Who & order of events important
    • Objects: Objects & uses? Accessibility tools?
  • You can ask about intersectional topics: How, if at all, was your interview partners’ identities harmed, or supported, during these activities? How did assumptions made by UW impact them? etc.

Recruitment: considerations

We are helping, but note that recruitment typically raises a number of access issues

  • Are your recruitment materials accessible
  • How will you compensate participants?
  • How much do you know about the group your are targeting and what to expect from/of them?
  • Will they see you as trustworthy?
  • Are you giving them enough agency in the study process?

Document Accessibility

Learning Goals

  • Announcements

  • AEIOU

  • Accessible Study Planning

  • Document Accessibility

Color Contrast

  • Color contrast: WCAG Level AAA requires a contrast ratio of at least
    • 7:1 for normal text
    • 4.5:1 for large text (14t pt bold or larger)
    • Avoid anything else!

Use structure properly

  • Differs with each platform
  • Key things
    • Use headers and styles
    • Don’t ever skip from one header to the next
    • Ensure that the tab and reading order are logical and intuitive

PowerPoint / Google Slides order

  • tab-order == reading order
  • Slides go back (highest z) to front

Simplify Language

  • Avoid jargon
  • You can always elaborate when you speak (for posters and presentations)
  • Avoid clutter

What is clutter?

Please, for the love of all that is good on this fine planet we call home, do not do this to your poor audience members

They don’t deserve this! What did they do to you? They probably flew hundreds of miles and of all talks and things to do in this new place came to YOUR presentation. And what do you do? You greet them with this GIANT wall of text! How rude. It’s ugly to look at. It’s hard to read. It’s annoying as heck for me to type out this thing just to make a point!

So please, don’t do this to your audience members. Be a responsible presenter. Practice your talks so you don’t have to read off the slide (or use speaker notes! also okay!). Break up your content so looking at your slides isn’t like getting smacked in the face with a wall of text.

But there are exceptions! (e.g., if you have a thick accent)

Don’t use color or other visual characteristics to convey meaning

Wrong: “required fields are in red”

Wrong: “click the circle on the right”

Correct: “required fields are labeled ‘Required’ and colored red”

Label things properly (1/2)

  • Links should be labeled appropriately, as described here.
  • Provide a document title that describes its topic or purpose

Label things properly (2/2)

  • Identify the language of the document (or individual parts of a multilingual document).
  • Allow users to bypass blocks of content that are irrelevant or often repeated (e.g., bookmarks in a PDF)
  • Provide ALT text

How to add ALT Text to various things

  • HTML ```img src=… alt=“Girl in a jacket” width=“500” height=“600”’’’
  • “Content Creation Platforms” (e.g. WordPress, twitter)
  • Google Slides & PowerPoint
  • Word Documents
  • Any other questions?

When to Describe Identity

Bennett et al interviewed BIPOC, Non-Binary and/or Transgender Blind people.

  • Meeting new people
  • Identity is the topic of discussion
  • Seeking specific first person perspectives
  • Want/need to understand representation in the media
  • Need to “read” a room, for example to decide whether to code switch

Many different situations to consider (1/2)

Read up on some of these links when you are faced with specific description needs

Many different situations to consider (2/2)

Read up on some of these links when you are faced with specific description needs