SME interview on user needs and preferences for vision impaired users (May 9, 2012)

General data about the SME and clients

• Occupational therapist for Vision Technology Services at OCAD U
• Sees clients on a regular basis (4/week)
• Client demographic:
  • More adults than children, with most adults being 50+
  • Roughly equal split gender-wise
  • Half are on government ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program)
  • Occupationally:
    • Some have small part-time jobs (e.g., at a store)
    • Those who do not receive ODSP support are working if within working age, mostly in a professional setting (office work, teachers, etc.) that depends on computers
  • Technical ability:
    • Most clients depend on the use of the computer
    • Client computer savvy depends largely on age
    • Older clients less likely to be computer savvy, though some are
    • Most clients are familiar with basic operation of email, internet browsing, basic word processing, etc.
    • Some clients have more involved usage of the computer (finance, etc.), many use it for social networking (Facebook, etc.)
    • Most clients have used a computer in the past, though some have almost no experience

Client challenges

• Most clients have low-vision or blindness
• Non-vision issues
  • Mainly brain-related (e.g., CP, stroke, autism, developmental delay, Down syndrome, brain injury)
  • Some with wrist injury, carpel tunnel
• Vision disabilities include:
  • Low-vision
  • Photo sensitivity to glare or bright lights
    • Users with this issue often prefer black backgrounds
  • Difficulty tracking (identification + tracking)
  • Fatigue (esp. eye fatigue)
  • Field cuts
    • Central vision only
    • Peripheral vision only
  • Blind spots
  • Floaters
  • Double vision (often caused by one eye pointing in a different direction than the other)
    • Considerations: if double vision is vertical, we can crop the line above and below to enable focus on the line; if double vision in horizontal, can increase letter/word spacing
  • Colour blindness

Range of preferences

• Ability to change colour schemes (SME isn't sure if clients use this on the web, but can imagine that it would be)
  • Contrast (mainly high)
  • Black background, if photo-sensitive
• Bold letters
• Clear landmarks on the page to help navigation when zoomed
• Screen reader accessibility: meaningful links, structure, etc.
• Most clients prefer sans serif fonts for reading on the computer
• Larger text size
• Spacing between lines
  • Also spacing between letters and words, but this is less often

Things that would be nice to have

• Real-time OCRing of images in websites
• More portable options for ATs (equipment that looks less like adaptive technologies, and are lighter and easier to carry)
• Better OCR
• Identification of cursor, cursor targeting
• Some solution for information overload
  • For some clients, the amount of information that's presented dramatically slows the processing of what they see
  • They need a solution for helping to identify what they're looking for within the deluge of information (recognize items in a slew)
  • Like a list of things, or a view of the breadth with help directing to the appropriate places
  • Existing solution: Dolphin Guide (menu-driven simplification system)
• Speech synthesis still sounds mechanical and not human
• Often partial vision clients are visual learners, and the auditory alternatives aren't good enough