Eliane Pinheiro Capra

Protocols for Evaluation of Site Accessibility with the Participation of Blind Users

Abstract User interfaces, through which users interact with the systems, should be designed according to the accessibility guidelines, with focus on usability. To this end, the designers of these interfaces should analyze whether their requirements meet the quality requirements, including their “user-friendliness” and “accessibility” features. The design of interfaces that are able to meet the needs of users with different characteristics is not a trivial task. It is paramount to involve the users and analyze how they interact with the system. Interface evaluation methods are absolutely necessary when gauging the systems quality, since they allow the identification of many usability problems where the focus in on their accessibility. The present work aims to analyze two methods of observation involving people with totally impaired vision in order to develop a protocol with recommendations that can assist professionals in the identification of characteristics and problems, which can be solved or minimized during the interfaces’ evaluations, thus facilitating the process of system access focusing on users with totally impaired vision.

Evaluation of Web Accessibility: An Approach Related to Functional Illiteracy

Abstract Functionally illiterate users, that means those lacking reading, writing, calculation and science skills, are potential Internet users, so technological solutions must ensure that content is intelligible to them. The interface design guided by accessibility norms and may improve accessibility, but considering accessibility evaluations is an essential part of this process. Evaluation can be automatic, performed by specialists or performed with the participation of users. Some barriers are only detected with user tests. Usually, usability tests are adapted and performed with the purpose of evaluating accessibility, but most of works in this area dealt with persons with visual impairment. This paper aimed to research the behavior of functionally illiterate users, identifying important characteristics that the evaluators and specialists should consider in the performance of an evaluation of accessibility with this audience. As a result was generated a list of important characteristics that contribute to the adaptation of usability evaluation methods with functionally illiterate users. Besides that, it was elaborated a list of best strategies that the specialists and researchers should consider in accessibility evaluation with the audience under examination.

Protocolos para Avaliação da Acessibilidade Web com a Participação de Analfabetos Funcionais

A interacao com Sistemas de Informacao, em particular os executados na web , e um processo particular que exige do usuario certo grau de aprendizado. Assim, a interface, que e uma parte importante dessa interacao, deve estar acessivel de forma a nao impedir que os usuarios utilizem esses sistemas. Nesse contexto, a acessibilidade web esta relacionada a remocao das barreiras que impedem que mais pessoas possam perceber, compreender e usufruir de todo apoio computacional oferecido pelos sistemas web . Dentre essas pessoas estao os analfabetos funcionais, que sao aqueles aos quais faltam dominio nas habilidades de leitura, escrita, calculos e ciencias. E importante considera-los como potenciais usuarios da internet e propor solucoes tecnologicas acessiveis para eles e tambem adequadas a um publico mais letrado, mas que garantam que o conteudo seja facilmente compreendido. Considerar as normas e as orientacoes de acessibilidade no projeto de interfaces minimiza barreiras no acesso a esses sistemas, mas considerar as avaliacoes de acessibilidade tambem e fundamental. A literatura propoe tres tipos de avaliacao: a automatica, a realizada por especialista e a realizada com a participacao de usuarios com diferentes deficiencias ou limitacoes. Pesquisas revelaram que realizar avaliacoes automaticas e com especialistas nao sao suficientes para tornar a interface de um sistema acessivel. Existem barreiras que so sao detectadas com a avaliacao de usuarios com diferentes deficiencias ou limitacoes, baseando-se em metodos de avaliacao da usabilidade adaptados. Foram encontrados na literatura alguns trabalhos que se baseiam em testes de usabilidade para avaliar a acessibilidade, mas em sua maioria com foco em pessoas com deficiencia visual. Esta pesquisa teve por objetivo pesquisar o comportamento dos usuarios analfabetos funcionais, identificando caracteristicas importantes que os avaliadores devem considerar na realizacao de uma avaliacao de acessibilidade com esse publico. Para isso, foram necessarios os seguintes estudos: (a) estudo etnografico, de forma a identificar caracteristicas que contribuissem para a adaptacao dos metodos de avaliacao de usabilidade para avaliar a acessibilidade com analfabetos funcionais; (b) estudo de caso, com vistas a aplicacao dos conhecimentos adquiridos nos estudos anteriores e identificacao de outras estrategias necessarias para as avaliacoes; (c) definicao e validacao dos protocolos, com o objetivo de verificar a adequacao dos protocolos identificados. Esses estudos resultaram em uma lista de protocolos para auxiliar nas avaliacoes de acessibilidade com a participacao de analfabetos funcionais.

Privacy: What is the Research Scenario in Brazilian Symposium IHC?

The Internet improved the individuals ability to interact with others by changing the way people live and relate. However, the connected world brings many challenges, like privacy in designing system interfaces. This article aims to analyze how privacy has been treated in Brazilian Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researches, in order to verify how the fourth challenge published in the Brazilian Great Challenges of Research in HCI (I GranDIHC-BR) report - about privacy and users information visibility - has contributed to more researches about privacy among ten editions of Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computational Systems (IHC Brazil). For this, we mapped 314 complete articles published in the last ten editions of the IHC Brazil, in a comparative approach, focusing on publications about privacy: five editions before and five editions after the I GranDIHC-BR, using systematic literature review (SLR) method. As a result, we identified few articles related to the topic, most of them about social network systems privacy and focused on understanding the users perception of privacy. These findings demonstrate that there are still many challenges on the subject to be investigated by the HCI community.

Análise de Usabilidade de um Sistema de EaD Baseada em Modelos Markovianos e em Taxonomia

The effectiveness of E-learning resides mainly in the interactivity between student / interface / teacher. Understand how the user behaves when it is connected to the system, creates opportunities for improvements in several areas, including usability. This paper proposes a usability methodology for web systems based on Markovian models and taxonomy. The use of two methods allows a more complete assessment of usability, since the Markovian allow a quantitative assessment that is complemented with the qualitative assessment provided by inspection of taxonomy. A case study of an E-learning application in use for over 5 years and with more than 60 thousand students is presented to validate the proposal.

Evaluation of usability utilizing Markov models

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the usability of a remote learning system in its initial development phase, using a quantitative usability evaluation method through Markov models.Design/methodology/approach – The paper opted for an exploratory study. The data of interest of the research correspond to the possible accesses of users in a learning systems pre‐project. The present research is intended to answer questions of the type “how”, evaluating the usability through Markov models and the interaction of the learning systems users.Findings – The paper provides a study which allowed the generation of a probability matrix among states and actions, which was utilized in the evaluation of usability based on Markov models, where the usability criteria specified were analyzed. Markov models allow a series of measures of interest to be calculated and they have been successfully utilized in the evaluation of computing and communication systems.Originality/value – This research aimed to investi...