Lecture 2

Question 1

What is Accessibility (general term)?

Answer 1

Provides access and assistance to people with special needs.

Question 2

Are accessibility issues usability issues?

Answer 2

Not necessarily

Question 3

What is Accessible technology?

Answer 3

Accessibility ‘built-in’ to equipment or software, IT designed to be accessible.

Designing technology to make it more accessible to a. wider range of users (without extra pieces of technology/AT)

Question 4

What is Assistive technology?

Answer 4

Specialised piece of equipment or software which facilitates access to using IT.

Question 5

Give 4 examples of keyboard input (hardware) modifications

Answer 5

Keyguards

Alternative Layouts

• Reduce movement
• One-handed keyboards, possible chords

Membrane surfaces (minimise required pressure)

Increased targets

Question 6

Give 4 examples of keyboard input (software) modifications

Answer 6

• Sticky keys
• Slow keys or disable auto-repeat
• Modify keyboard mappings/create macros and shortcuts
• On screen/virtual keyboards

Question 7

How can you speed up (acceleration techniques) keyboard input? Give 3 examples.

Answer 7

• Control macros
• Word prediction
• Abbreviations

Question 8

Give two alternative input devices/methods (without keyboard)

Answer 8

• Speech/voice input instead of typing/mouse (e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking). - Dictation and control of menus
• Switch-based interfaces instead of typing/mouse. Usually used in combination with scanning software.

Question 9

Give 5 examples of possible switches.

Answer 9

• Joystick
• Grasp switch
• Pressure switch
• Sip and puff
• Muscle/sensor switch

Question 10

Give 4 examples of mouse input alternatives.

Answer 10

• Keyboard only
• Trackball, joystick
• Eyegaze, headmouse
• Switches with scanning software

Question 11

Give 2 examples of auditory output alternatives

Answer 11

• Signing (remember, not all deaf people use sign language especially if they lost their hearing later in life)
• Captions (text translation of dialogue, sounds, etc)

Question 12

What does AT stand for?

Answer 12

Assistive Technology

Question 13

Give 4 examples of assistive technology for non-visual output

Answer 13

• Braille displays (remember - only a minority of blind people know braille)
• Tactile pictures
• Screen magnifiers
• Screen readers (VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA)

Question 14

Give 2 pros and 3 cons for Accessible Technology

Answer 14

Pro

• Convenient and cheaper, users don’t need to buy any additional devices or software
• Removes ‘stigma’ or using AT

Cons

• Needs careful design of IT
• May not cater to very severe needs
• Needs to fit with AT

Question 15

Give 3 pros for Assistive Technology

Answer 15

• Powerful, designed to fit a specific need
• May be necessary for people with multiple or severe disabilities
• Sometimes more commercially or practically viable

Question 16

What is modality in terms of HCI?

Answer 16

A modality is the classification of a single independent channel of sensory input/output between a computer and a human. A system is designated unimodal if it has only one modality implemented, and multimodal if it has more than one.