When

• Saturday, September 15, 2012

Where

• Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center
• One Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142

Who

Organizers include:

• Char James-Tanny, @CharJTF
• Sarah Bourne, @sarahebourne
• Kathleen Wahlbin, @wahlbin
• Mark Sadecki, @cptvitamin
• John Rochford, @ClearHelper

2012 sponsors include my own project, New England INDEX, which provides information about programs and services for people with disabilities in Massachusetts.

Register Now for the 2012 Boston Accessibility Conference!

• The Boston Accessibility Unconference is a participant-driven event, also known as a BarCamp.
• It is an opportunity for members of the design-, development-, usability- and accessibility communities, along with end users, to share information and interact with each other.
• Frequently Asked Questions

When

• Saturday, September 17, 2011
• Tentative Schedule

Where

• Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center
• One Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142
• Directions

Who

• Attending are passionate developers; media specialists; designers; usability- and accessibility professionals; and end users from the United States, Canada and even India.
• Organizers include:
• Char James-Tanny, @CharJTF
• Sarah Bourne, @sarahebourne
• Kathleen Wahlbin, @wahlbin
• Pratik Patel, @ppatel
• Jennison Ascuncion, @Jennison
• Mike Paciello, @mpaciello
• John Rochford, @ClearHelper
• Larry Goldberg, Director at the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media, will give the keynote address.
• There is a growing group of sponsors including my own project, New England INDEX.

Register Now!

This post is a synopsis of an approach to circumventing such problems. An example has been implemented on a web site of the German Institute for Human Rights, which is an easy-to-read version of a United Nations convention on the rights of people with disabilities. A typically-appearing site search incorporates novel spelling-correction features and a simplified presentation of search results.

Spelling Correction

The site search suggests spelling alternatives only for words that actually appear within the content of the website. Searches for correctly-spelled words that produce no search results would be very frustrating for anyone.

To enable spelling suggestions, a manually-edited index of syntactically-similar words was created. Point values were assigned for similarities in the number of the same letters and the word length. A higher value was given to alternative words with the same first letter, but that was not essential.

To enable search-word spelling correction within the fewest steps possible, the most-similar alternatives are displayed in a word cloud. Of those, typically three, the one with the highest probability of matching the intended search word is presented in a larger text size.

Example Spelling Correction

The German word for “contact” is “kontakt”. Initiating a search with the misspelled word “kontat” produces a word cloud as shown in the following image.

The developers believe the word cloud makes it very easy to recognize the correctly-spelled word, and to select a search word. I don’t know why the first letters are capitalized.

Simplified Search Results

Search results are presented in plain language. Each has a bulleted, succinct summary of information on the linked page; and a contextually-relevant image to aid comprehension.

Example Search Result

The following image shows a single search result translated from German to English using Google Translate.

One aspect of the search results I do not favor is that links to the search-result pages are not underlined. It is only when the cursor is hovered over a link, such as “Contact” in the example search result, that an underline appears.

Conclusion

I am impressed with this approach. This is the first time I have seen search results presented so simply, and with accompanying relevant imagery. I think the spelling-correction features are also worthwhile. In a pilot study of them, 9 of 34 people with learning disabilities could use the search site independently. I expect the developers will continue user testing. With funding and time, I would like to develop a site search using similar techniques.

Notes

• Reference for all information about spelling-correction:
• Stephan Bergmann and Markus Erle. (2010) “Easy-to-Web Search for People with Learning Disabilities as Part of an Integrated Concept of Cognitive Web Accessibility.” In K. Miesenberger et al. (Eds.), Computers Helping People with Special Needs (pp. 657–660). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag Berlin.
• This blog post is related to a previous post:
• Teaching Web Searching To People With Cognitive Disabilities
• No endorsement of the German Institute of Human Rights, nor the developers of the “Easy-to-Web Search”, is intended or implied.

About Navigation

• Feature the program prominently on the university site’s home page. Students could not find information about the program because a link to its home page is hidden within a drop-down menu.
• Display links in navigation menus rather than place them in drop-down menus.
  • We plan to do so, perhaps indenting the links of subsection pages. (Unordered lists are good for that.)
• Within the left-navigation menus of the program’s pages, display a link to the program’s home page. When students got lost within the website, they said they wanted to start over by returning to the program’s home page.
  • We will do so. We will also consider adding a button with an image shaped like a house, which students said they associate with a site’s home page.
• Do not depend upon breadcrumb navigation to help visitors navigate the site. Students and faculty did not notice the breadcrumb navigation until prompted. Faculty indicated it was useful once they were shown its function.
• Do not depend upon links scattered throughout the content. They were not immediately apparent to students when they were asked to find specific information.
• Do not depend upon a search box to help visitors. When asked to find specific information, neither the students nor the faculty thought to use the site’s search box. Doing so would be confusing anyway, faculty pointed out, because search results are derived from the university’s entire site, not just from the program’s portion of it.
• Do not position navigation menus on the right side of pages. Students and faculty had to be prompted to notice them.
  • This is unsurprising. Web usability studies based upon eye tracking have shown people look at pages in an F-shaped pattern. One consequence is that they pay no attention to the right side of pages.
• Consider consolidating the number of links in the left menus. Only their first few links were read by the students.
• Consider reducing the number of choices on each page. For example, the large number of site navigation links were simply overwhelming to students.
  • We may have to develop a template for the program’s section of the university site that presents significantly fewer navigation choices.
• Link course descriptions to professors’ profiles. We had set up course descriptions to be found by drilling down by year, then by curriculum, then by topic. That did not make sense to students.

About Content

• Use a larger default text size.
• Add a lot more pictures, particularly contextually-relevant ones to enhance comprehension of textual content.
• Closely associate images to their relevant textual content. Example: The list of faculty includes pictures of them, but it is unclear which photo is associated with which professor’s name and description.
• Provide faculty-specific contact information within their profiles rather than in a central location.
• Continue to use bulleted lists. Students found such content easier to read; faculty found it easier to scan.
• Embed videos, not just link to them.
  • We may use Easy YouTube Player, which is designed for people with cognitive disabilities.
• Use a web form, not an email link, for visitors to submit questions and site feedback. Students indicated a web form would be easier for them. A faculty member pointed out that such a link will not work at all unless a visitor’s computer is configured to open email software once that link is clicked.
• Determine a way to make program contact info apparent so visitors will contact the program, not the university.
• Include content for current students, not just prospective students.
  • Such content is now in a PDF. We will likely convert it to a web page so students do not need to have special software (Acrobat Reader) to view it.

Notes

• I am open to suggestions and encourage them.
• This blog post is the third in a related series. The previous one was “Struggling to Reduce Dense Content Into Chunks Without Requiring Multiple Clicks“.

Over the past few months, an adjunct faculty member has reduced the amount of content, simplified its language, and reorganized it. I created a functional site mockup to demonstrate that work. Yesterday, we showed it to a small group of students, then to a small group of faculty.

Dilemma

Our attempt to separate content into small chunks produced more pages. This exacerbated a problem experienced by the students, which was that navigating the many layers of the site is perplexing. Moreover, faculty indicated frustration with having to click many links to find desired information.

Example

The current first-year curriculum page contains short descriptions for twenty courses. For the mockup, we moved each description to its own page, reducing the curriculum page to a list of course titles. This design requires extra clicks to see course descriptions. As well, the groups indicated the curriculum page is still too long.

Solution?

We will next shorten the curriculum page by dividing it into sub-pages by topic. One- to two sentence descriptions of the courses under their titles may obviate the need for extra clicks to view more-detailed information. We will know if this has achieved any success only after testing with students.

Overall, I am describing an approach designed to resolve a larger dilemma. How can we provide information about the program in a simple way for students while also supplying a level of detail that may be required by professionals, parents, and even the students themselves? I suppose this is an adventure to find out.

Notes

• I will detail in a subsequent blog post the other feedback we received. Some of it will reveal the dilemmas I have described are, of course, more complicated.
• I am open to suggestions and encourage them.
• A previous, related blog post outlined our plan to redesign the site. See University Web Site for People with Learning Disabilities: Starting a Redesign.

A common way of designing such interactivity into Web pages is to use JavaScript. I met last week with a developer who is an accessibility expert. For many years, Rich Caloggero has worked for The National Center for Accessible Media and for The MIT Adaptive Technology Information Center. We anticipate building interactive features that, for example, would indicate to people they indeed pressed the correct keys, in the appropriate sequence, to enlarge a Web page.

It is my hope to approximate on a simple level the sophisticated feedback features that Dr. Janet Twyman, who is guiding me in this project, has had built into software for teaching children to read. From the beginning, she has stressed to me the importance of detecting and reinforcing the pressing of the correct key sequence. I will post the details of this effort as the three of us develop them.

Notes: This post is the fourth in a series about Teaching Web Page (Text) Enlargement. Please post a comment with any suggestions.

The site teaches exclusively via videos. Among the 50+ videos now on the site, “How to make text bigger (or smaller)”, embedded below, is included in the first group displayed on the home page. My guess is that’s because learning how to make text bigger is one of the most common skills parents (older adults for whom vision may not be ideal) request to be taught.

The video starts be reassuring the audience that the task is “super easy”. The skill is then succinctly defined. It is taught exactly how I intend to do so, in that the audience is shown how to use a two-key combination within a Web browser. There is perhaps one main difference between the video and the one I hope to produce for people with cognitive disabilities. I intend to show an image of a keyboard, focusing specifically on how to press the correct two keys, in sequence, to make a Web page (text) larger.

Notes:

• This post is the third in a series about Teaching Web Page (Text) Enlargement. Next up: “Teaching People How To Enlarge Web Pages: Providing Feedback”.
• I appreciate that Google captioned all of the videos.

To develop a best practice for teaching a Web page (text) enlargement skill, I will conduct in-person teaching to groups of people with cognitive disabilities. Specifically, I intend to teach people to use a keyboard with a Web browser to enlarge Web pages. Many browsers will enlarge pages in response to the pressing of two keys: the plus key and the Control key (IBM) / Command key (Mac).

Functional Objective

Given a Web page that may contain images, but must contain text, learners will press two keys to enlarge page content.

Outcome Measure

Learners will open a novel Web page and, without instruction or prompting, enlarge its contents.

Component Skills To Be Taught

Pressing Keys

Learners will:

• locate the correct keys (2)
• hold-down one key for at least 3 seconds with sufficient force to be recognized by the computer
• hold down the one key and tap the other key by pressing it with sufficient force to be recognized by the computer, and immediately releasing it

Completing Sequential Steps

Learners will:

• follow a multi-step chain of behaviors
• identify the start- and end points of the behavior chain
• repeat the behavior chain

Prerequisites

Learners must be able to:

• respond to textual-, auditory- and/or video-based instruction
• press keys with their fingers or with equivalent assistive-technology
• press the correct keys only
• open a Web page with Internet Explorer

Computers must be:

• IBM-compatible
• attached to a monitor and a keyboard or equivalent assistive-technology
• using Internet Explorer as the default Web browser
• connected to the Internet

Notes:

• This post is the second in a series about Teaching Web Page (Text) Enlargement. Next up: “Google Video Teaches How To Make Text Bigger”.
• On the future Clear Helper Web Site, I intend to teach all skills via the Web itself.
• Please post a comment with any suggestions.

The Approach

We propose Multimodal summary of complex sentences. It gives readers the main idea of sentences using pictures and compressed text structured according to simplified text.

The general steps in the MMS approach are:

• Identify both the main idea of the sentence and related entities and use them to create a compressed summary.
• Extract pictures for the compressed summary.
• Add structure to the pictures and text.

Example

Input sentence: In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous people.

Identify event and related entities: In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under
contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the
indigenous people.

Extract picture and add structure:

Naushad UzZaman, Jeffrey P. Bigham and James F. Allen. “Multimodal Summarization for People with Cognitive Disabilities in Reading, Linguistic and Verbal Comprehension” poster presented at “All Together Now: The Power of Partnerships In Cognitive Disability & Technology.” Tenth Annual Conference of The Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities. Westminster, Colorado. 21 October 2010.

Note: No endorsement of The Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at The University of Rochester is intended or implied.

For people of all abilities, examples of basic Web skills are:

• opening a Web site / using Web addresses;
• navigating by clicking links and using the back button;
• performing simple searches with a search engine.

Teaching such a skill includes:

• defining it distinctly;
• performing a task analysis;
• operationalizing the required behaviors to acquire the skill;
• reinforcing those behaviors.

For people with cognitive disabilities, an additional basic Web skill is enlarging the text/font size of a Web site. Thus to learn how best to teach such a seemingly-simple skill, I am continuing my effort to create related instructions.

Guiding me is Janet S. Twyman, Ph.D., BCBA, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at The University of Massachusetts Medical School (Shriver Center), where I work. Dr. Twyman is an expert in instructional design.

Notes: Future blog posts will provide details on each step we take in this experiment. This post is the first in a series about Teaching Web Page (Text) Enlargement. Next up: “Teaching People How To Enlarge Web Pages: Task Definition“.