Everyday inclusive Web design: an activity perspective

CS575MADHAVI L NIDAMARTHY

Topics

Introduction Design Activity Models System designers & end-users Interaction Results Conclusion

Introduction

The democratization of information publication, organization impact on the ability of everyday people to act as writers, artists and designers.

Users are taking on the role of creators and publishers as part of their daily activities on the Web.

End-user designers who participate actively and creatively in personally meaningful activities.

Web authoring tools have evolved toward more complex and collaborative forms.

Ex: Weblogging platforms and collaborative tools such as Wikipedia.

'Social Web' applications such as YouTube and Flickr

Users of the social networking site MySpace create personal profiles, share photos and videos and participate in online discussion groups.

Users of the video-sharing site YouTube watched over 100 million videos and uploaded over 65,000 videos a day.

Contd..

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Survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project - more than 35% of US Internet users have published some material on the Web.

Americans with Disabilities Act requires that all structures created for public use provide reasonable access for individuals with disabilities.

Guidelines or rules reflect society's commitments to environmental protection, honest reporting and equal opportunity.

Impact of end-user designers on the quality of information on the Web, focusing on the accessibility of Web content for users with disabilities ?

Content produced without consideration of disabled users may prevent some users from accessing this content.

Background: everyday inclusive Web design

End-user design considers ordinary users as active participants in the design of collaborative systems.

The notion of everyday inclusive Web design is used to

describe end-user design activities that produce artifacts that are accessible to users with a wide range of skills and abilities.

Analysis suggests design changes to end-user design tools that may increase awareness of Web accessibility and promote accessible Web design practices for all types of Web content.

End users as designers

The consumer/design spectrum

User roles in terms of their ability to influence the system design

Meta-design consists of 'activities, processes and objectives to create new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and be creative.

Web 2.0 applications - The ability of users to participate as designers

applications are based upon the collective participation of a large number of active users;

control over the system is shared between system developers and community participants;

users are able to design personal profiles and spaces and to engage in social relationships within the system;

applications provide rich user interfaces that allow users easily to manipulate text and media;

applications are entirely Web-based and are updated frequently by the developers.

Web Accessibility and inclusive design

Web accessibility refers to the degree to which a Website may be accessed by people with varying abilities.

Access to the Web can affect disabilities, including sensory impairments such as blindness and deafness, impairments to cognitive and reading ability.

Ex: limited visual ability users. These user may use assistive technology such as a screen reader that can read the page text out loud.

Contd..

Fangs - the screen reader emulator, is a Fire fox browser plug-in, which reads Web pages, allowing developers to identify problems that might be encountered by screen reader users.

How can we encourage end-user designers to create content - accessible to users with disabilities ?

Designers of social Web applications may include accessibility features in their authoring tools.

No guarantee that these features are used correctly

System designers

Activity system of a social software system designer

Contd..

Basic framework for the site is produced by a skilled system designer using professional-grade programming tools.

Involves the development of Web application software and development of the associated user community.

Some designers may practice inclusive design and may use tools such as Watchfire web tools and Fangs to verify the accessibility of their creations.

http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/test-me-25-freebie-website-accessibility-checkers/

End-users

Activity system of an end-user

Contd..

End-user designers are the users of the social Web applications created by system designers.

Users are participants in social networking sites, blogging communities and media sharing sites.

End-users do not typically have access to the Web application's source code, but may instead use tools produced by the system designer.

Individuals with disabilities may use assistive technology such as screen readers when browsing the Web.

Co-construction of site content

Site content as shared outcome of system designer and end-user activity

System designers may focus on the development of the overall application,end-users focus on using the system to express themselves and interact with others.

Accessible design practices

End-users require access to design tools that support accessible design practices, while system designers must instruct end-users about available accessibility features.

Ex: Flickr provide a mechanism for users to add text descriptions to their photos.

Some users have included descriptions, others have not.

Users browsing the Web without image support will be able to gain information from the images with descriptions, but not from those without descriptions

Role ambiguity of end-user designers

Contradiction between personal expression and publishing objectives in end-user design activity

Users with disabilities are not visible within the system

Contradiction between perceived and actual number of system users with disabilities leads to inaccessible design

Existing accessibility tools do not support design-in-use

Mismatch between the evaluation tool and actual practice may have two main effects:

Existing accessibility tools may not be usable by end-user designers with limited technical knowledge.

Accessibility tools used by professionals do not

accommodate design-in-use performed by end-users.

Supporting everyday inclusive Web design through tools

Embed accessibility in end-user design tools

Approach: page quality indicator. Ex: Footprints

Empower users to identify and report accessibility issues. Approach: Encourage users to report accessibility issues as they are encountered.

Support accessibility evaluation at multiple levels of activity

How People with Disabilities Use the Web

online shopper with color blindness (user control of style sheets)

online student who is deaf (captioned audio portions of multimedia files) – enabling synchronized captioning of audio and description of video.

accountant with blindness (appropriate markup of tables, alternative text, Tabbing through structural elements, synchronization of visual, speech output, and braille display)

http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/Overview.html

Conclusion

Everyday inclusive Web design follow accessible design practices by ordinary users to ensure the accessibility of their own creative work.

Universal accessibility of social Web applications cooperative work between end-users and the designers

Accessibility be recognized and addressed by Web developers, users and accessibility advocacy organizations.

Thank You