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User-centered design in universal design resources?

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Abstract

Studies have revealed usability problems with universal design resources (UDRs). In this paper, four UDR development cases are reviewed (Section 508 standards, Web accessibility guidelines, the British Standard on managing inclusive design, and Irish guidelines on public access terminals). Evidence of a user-centered design approach was found in only one case. The needs of people making universally usable products and services in industry are discussed in the context of the use of UDRs and results of organizational research studies. Nine recommendations are made on the development of user-centered UDRs and the setup and management of accessibility teams in organizations.

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Notes

  1. For those unfamiliar with the term, the Usability Professional’s Association gives the following concise definition “User-Centered Design (UCD) is an approach to design that grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. UCD processes focus on users through the planning, design, and development of a product”. See: http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/about_usability/what_is_ucd.html.

  2. The US Access Board (http://www.access-board.gov) is responsible for the creation of guidelines concerning disability access that are required as part of US law.

  3. From the Center for Applied Special Technology’s website (http://www.cast.org): “CAST no longer supports the Bobby accessibility testing software. Bobby was sold to Watchfire in 2004 which, in turn, was acquired by IBM in 2007”.

  4. The earliest proposed version of WCAG 2.0 was published 25 January 25, 2001. Links to the older versions of the guideline can be found in the headers of the most current version of WCAG 2.0.

  5. See http://wcagsamurai.org.

  6. http://www.section508.gov is a website set up by the US General Services Administration to help government staff with the implementation of Section 508. The site has the Section 508 standards and some supporting information.

  7. http://www.w3.org/wai.

  8. For the purposes of this paper, we are using the terms inclusive design and universal design interchangeably, even though we acknowledge that some people would argue that there are subtle differences.

  9. The eight UDRs in the study included the Section 508 standards discussed in Case 1.

  10. The results of this research are in preparation for publication. See the UDiP project website for publications (http://www.hsi.gatech.edu/cise/udip/).

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Acknowledgments

This paper builds on the work described in a paper presented at the HCI International Conference, Beijing, China, 2007 [13]. Our thanks to the UAIS editors for the invitation to submit this follow-up to that conference paper. Mr. Law is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and a State of Victoria ICT scholarship through the College of Business, School of Business Information Technology at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia (http://www.rmit.edu.au). Financial support for the Business Decision Making and Accessibility (BDMA) project was also generously provided by Media Access Australia (http://www.mediaaccess.org.au), by Vision Australia (http://www.visionaustralia.org.au), and the Research Development Unit of the RMIT College of Business. More information on the BDMA project can be found at http://www.udprojects.org. Mr. Law is indebted to his colleagues working on the Universal Design in Practice (UDiP) Project, referred to in this paper. More information about the UDiP Project at the at Georgia Institute of Technology can be found on the project website at http://www.hsi.gatech.edu/cise/udip.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business, School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University, 239-251 Bourke St, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    Chris M. Law & Elspeth McKay

  2. College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, Room 4105, Hornbake Bldg, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Paul T. Jaeger

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  1. Chris M. Law
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Correspondence to Chris M. Law.

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Law, C.M., Jaeger, P.T. & McKay, E. User-centered design in universal design resources?. Univ Access Inf Soc 9, 327–335 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-009-0182-z

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