Technology enhanced accessible interaction framework and a method for evaluating requirements and designs

Abstract

The motivation for this thesis was the lack of any existing comprehensive framework or method to help developers with the evaluation or gathering of requirements and the evaluation or designing of technology solutions to accessible interactions between people, technology and objects, particularly in face-to-face situations involving people with disabilities. A Technology Enhanced Interaction Framework (TEIF) and TEIF Method for enhancing interactions with people, technology and objects through the use of technology was developed and successfully validated by three developer experts, three accessibility experts, and an HCI professor. The TEIF main components are people, objects, technology, interactions, time / place, and context while the TEIF Method involves requirement questions with multiple choice answers and technology suggestions, Interaction Diagrams and Use Case Diagrams. For evaluation of the TEIF Method, an example scenario involving a hearing impaired visitor to a Thai small local museum was developed along with corresponding requirement questions and answers, technology suggestions, technology solutions, an Interaction Diagram and a Use Case Diagram. While the TEIF has all the necessary components and sub components to be a general framework, the TEIF Method is focused on accessible interactions, and the content of the method used in this research was focused on people with hearing impairment because of time limitations. An experiment with 36 developers showed they were able to use the TEIF Method to evaluate requirements for technology solutions to problems involving interaction with hearing-impaired people better than the Other Methods. The TEIF Method helped developers select a best solution significantly more often than the Other Methods and rate the best solution significantly closer to expert ratings than the Other Methods. The TEIF Method also helped differentiation between solutions to be closer to experts’ differentiation than the Other Methods for some solutions and requirements. Questionnaire results showed that the developers thought that the TEIF Method helped to evaluate requirements and technology solutions to interaction problems involving hearing impaired people and would also help with gathering requirements and designing technology solutions for people with other disabilities. The developers also thought that the TEIF Method helped improve a developer’s awareness of interaction issues and understanding of how environment context affects interaction. Suggestions for future developments include extending the TEIF Method for other disabilities, including a more nuanced multi-level classification of how well different technologies meet different requirements and the use of the TEIF and TEIF Method as an index for case based solutions.

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