Accessibility

Types of Accessibility Issues

Impairment:

• The loss malformation or abnormality of an organ, structure or mental, psychological or anatomical function resulting from an observable and measurable condition which can be diagnosed.

Disability:

• partial or total reduction in the ability to perform an activity in a normal way or within the limits considered normal for a human being because of an impairment

Handicap:

• a disadvantage resulting from a disability or impairment that limits or prohibits an individual from fulfilling his or her social and cultural role.

Accessibility guidelines for kiosk UI and physical Design

• satisfies ADA Laws
• provides equal access for all types of disabilities

Internalization

Important terms

Locale:

• Set of features that can be varied depending on the language and culture of the user or the data.

Internalization:

• The process of designing software so that it can be easily adapted to different locales.

Localization:

• The process of adapting software to a locale.

Design for Internalization

• An application must first be internationalized before it can be localized.
• An international program has the following characteristics:
  • with localized data, a single executable can run is all supported locales
  • textual elements are not hard coded, they become variables that change according to the locale
  • new languages support does not require recompilation
• In the localization phase, the most time-consuming portion is the translation of text.
• Create a resource file for each locale and language
• All strings to be displayed (except data) are taken from this file
• English is just one language, from the start of the design
• plan the proper use of encoding
• Attention to variable size (text expansion)
  • some languages can take at least 30% more space
  • abbreviations may have to be expanded when translated
• Leaver room for longer translations
• avoid putting text in narrow columns
• don't embed text in images
• don't create sentences with UI elements

Translatability

Politeness

• Some countries require you to specify Mr, Dr, Eng. Etc.
  • these titles do not necessarily translate
• the family name is not always last
• salutations in letters are different in different locales
• in certain language/country, the whole text needs to be adjusted depending on the title (or seniority) of the reader (e.g. tu/vous in French)

Humour

Humour does not translate well

• puns are language-specific
• people are sensitive to different things in different cultures
  • jokes/cartoons can be offensive

Punctuation

• can vary based on language

Ambiguity

• Attention to ambiguous phrases
• How would a translator translate the following noun compound?
  • 'Display options’
    • Options of the display
    • Show the options (all of them)
• Expert English users will often understand these in context

Localization beyond text

What should be localized?

• Language selection
• Date formats
• icons
• illustrations
• numerical formats
• currency
• measures
• addresses

Language selection

• Avoid using national flags from which people pick their preferred language
• what order do they display languages?
• what language do you display for language choices?

Date formats

• date separators depend on locale
• 'am' and 'pm' not universally used
• ISO standard dates are unambiguous
• NON ISO date means different things in different locales

Icons

• careful with choice of metaphors
• some metaphors are culturally charged
• some concepts have been found extremely hard to represent as an icon

Illustrations

• careful with choice of illustrations
  • considered inappropriate in some cultures
  • what skin color do you use?

Numeric formats

• Groups:
  • number of digits in a group
  • group separator
  • decimal separator

Currency

• use the currency symbol of the data
• format depends n the user's locale, not the currency
  • differences in formats include:
    • symbol
    • position
    • blanks separating the symbol from the data

Measures

• be aware of the need to use imperial or metric units
• beware of odd measurements in data

Addresses

• don't rely on a fixed number of lines
• don't rely on a particular order of elements

Emotions

Anthropomorphism

Attributing human like qualities to inanimate objects (eg. cars, computer)

Well known phenomenon in advertising

• dancing butter, vegetables, breakfast cereals

Much exploited in human computer interaction

• make user experience more enjoyable, more motivating, make people feel at ease, reduce anxiety

Examples

As a welcome message:

1. “Hello Chris! Nice to see you again. Welcome back. Now what were we doing last time? Oh yes, exercise 5. Let’s start again.”
2. “User 24, commence exercise 5.”

Feedback when you get something wrong:

1. “Now Chris, that’s not right. You can do better than that. Try again.”
2. “Incorrect. Try again."

Emotional Relations

• requires both an emotional behavior (anthropomorphism) but also a detection (classification) of the emotion of the user.
• an emotion classification should be followed by a selection of appropriate emotional response
  • empathy
  • encouragement
  • acting upon (solution finding)
• not only to detect the emotion, but to learn which emotional reaction is most appropriate for different users

Virtual characters

We already see them appearing on our screens in the form of:

• sales agents, learning companions, wizards, pets, newsreaders

Provides a persona that is welcoming, has personality and makes user feel involved with them. But there must be compatibility with the user... the same as between humans

Diversify the avatars to find compatibility with the user

Emotional Detection

Emotion detection

Definition of 6 universal emotions:

• anger

• disgust

• fear

• happiness

• sadness

• surprises

• Identification of features on the face

• Association of curvature of features with emotions

• Use of machine learning approach to associate feature with classes(emotions)

Purpose of emotions

• Anger: to fight against problems
• Fear: to protect us from danger
• Anticipation: to look forward and plan
• Surprise: to focus on new situations
• Joy: To remind us what's important
• Sadness: To connect us with those we love
• Trust: To connect with people who help
• Disgust: to reject what is unhealthy

Emotion detection in voices

• features in voice will relate to frequency
• Attributes can also relate to the content:
  • similar to text-based emotion detection
  • features = words