Few research studies focus on how the use of assistive technologies is affected by social interaction among people. We present an interview study of 20 individuals to determine how assistive technology use is affected by social and professional contexts and interactions. We found that specific assistive devices sometimes marked their users as having disabilities; that functional access took priority over feeling self-conscious when using assistive technologies; and that two misperceptions pervaded assistive technology use: (1) that assistive devices could functionally eliminate a disability, and (2) that people with disabilities would be helpless without their devices. Our findings provide further evidence that accessibility should be built into mainstream technologies. When this is not feasible, assistive devices should incorporate cutting edge technologies and strive to be designed for social acceptability, a new design approach we propose here.

With the recent influx of smartphones, tablets, and wearables such as watches and glasses, personal interactive device use is increasingly visible and commonplace in public and social spaces. Assistive Technologies (ATs) used by people with disabilities are observable to others and, as a result, can affect how AT users are perceived. This raises the possibility that what we call “social accessibility” may be as important as “functional accessibility” when considering ATs. But, to date, ATs have almost exclusively been regarded as functional aids. For example, ATs are defined by the Technical Assistance to the States Act as technologies that are “used to increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.” To investigate perceptions and self-perceptions of AT users, we conducted a diary study of two groups of participants: people with disabilities and people without disabilities. Our goal was to explore the types of interactions and perceptions that arise around AT use in social and public spaces. During our 4-week study, participants with sensory disabilities wrote about feeling either self-conscious or self-confident when using an assistive device in a social or public situation. Meanwhile, participants without disabilities were prompted to record their reactions and feelings whenever they saw ATs used in social or public situations. We found that AT form and function does influence social interactions by impacting self-efficacy and self-confidence. When the design of form or function is poor, or when inequality between technological accessibility exists, social inclusion is negatively affected, as are perceptions of ability. We contribute a definition for the “social accessibility” of ATs and subsequently offer Design for Social Accessibility (DSA) as a holistic design stance focused on balancing an AT user's sociotechnical identity with functional requirements.

cURRent pRActice in computer interface design often takes for granted the user's sightedness. But a blind user employs a combination of other senses in accomplishing everyday tasks, such as having text read aloud or using fingers along a tactile surface to read Braille. As such, designers of assistive technologies must pay careful attention to the alternatives to sight to engage a blind user in completing tasks. It may be difficult for a sighted designer to understand how blind people mentally represent their environment or how they apply alternative options in accomplishing a task. Designers have responded to these challenges by developing alternative modes of interaction, including audible screen readers, 11 external memory aids for exploring haptic graphs, 20 non-speech sounds for navigating hypermedia, 16 two-finger haptic interfaces for touching virtual objects, 22 haptic modeling of virtual objects, 13 and multimodal (auditory, haptic, visual) feedback for simple computer-based tasks. 10 The effectiveness of these alternative modes of interaction is studied primarily through a usability framework, where blind and visually impaired users interact with specific devices in a controlled laboratory environment. These developments in assistive technology make a point to take advantage of the alternative modes of interaction available to blind users.Physical obstacles are not the only considerations affecting interaction between blind users and everyday artifacts. As we found in this study, elements of meaning, such as socialization, efficiency, flexibility, and control, strongly influence the use of both digital and non-digital artifacts by blind users. Taken-for-granted factors, such as an individual's social ties or busy schedule, might determine whether and how an object is used. Therefore, designers may need to pay close attention to the external factors that influence an individual's choice and use of technology. Conversely, and equally as important, designers must also consider how an individual's internal values and desires affect their technology preferences.The study described here is an indepth exploratory and descriptive case study 24 of a blind individual using various technologies in her home. Previous studies in lab settings compared interactions against a set of heuristics or with a control group, allowing researchers to isolate events in order to understand how users interact with specific technologies on a narrow range of tasks. We took this study out of the lab and into the home to get a better sense of the nuances of everyday life influencing how a blind user interacts with technology. It differs from the usability approaches in several ways. First, we wanted to look across a range of technologies for common kinds of task fail-A Blind Person's Interactions with Technology contributed articles auGuST 2009 | voL. 52 | no. 8 | communIcATIons of The Acm 59ure and workarounds, rather than on a single technology or task. Second, because emerging technologies involve a choice of what to place in hardw...

Fitts' law (1954) characterizes pointing speed-accuracy performance as throughput, whose invariance to target distances (A) and sizes (W) is known. However, it is unknown whether throughput and Fitts' law models in general are invariant to task dimensionality (1-D vs. 2-D), whether univariate (SD x ) or bivariate (SD x,y ) endpoint deviation is used, whether throughput is calculated using the mean-of-means approach or the slope-inverse approach, or whether Guiard's (2009) Form × Scale experiment design is used instead of fully crossed A×W factors. We empirically investigate the confluence of these issues, finding that Fitts' law is largely invariant across 1-D and 2-D, provided that univariate endpoint deviation (SD x ) is used in both, but that for 2-D pointing data, bivariate endpoint deviation (SD x,y ) results in better Fitts' law models. Also, the mean-of-means throughput calculation exhibits lower variance across subjects and dimensionalities than the slope-inverse calculation. In light of these and other findings, we offer recommendations for pointing evaluations, especially in 2-D. We also offer an evaluation tool called FittsStudy to facilitate comparisons.

Recently, Wobbrock et al. (2008) derived a predictive model of pointing accuracy to complement Fitts' law's predictive model of pointing speed. However, their model was based on one-dimensional (1-D) horizontal movement, while applications of such a model require two dimensions (2-D). In this paper, the pointing error model is investigated for 2-D pointing in a study of 21 participants performing a time-matching task on the ISO 9241-9 ring-of-circles layout. Results show that the pointing error model holds well in 2-D. If univariate endpoint deviation (SD x ) is used, regressing on N=72 observed vs. predicted error rate points yields R 2 =.953. If bivariate endpoint deviation (SD x,y ) is used, regression yields R 2 =.936. For both univariate and bivariate models, the magnitudes of observed and predicted error rates are comparable.

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This project reports on an observational and interview study of a non-sighted person to develop design insights for enhancing interactions between a blind person and everyday technological artifacts found in their home such as wristwatches, cell phones or software applications. Analyzing situations where work-arounds compensate for task failures reveals important insights for future artifact design for the blind such as the value of socialization, tactile and audio feedback, and facilitation of user independence.

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