Lessons from Expert Focus Groups on how to Better Support Adults with Mild Intellectual Disabilities to Engage in Co-Design

Abstract

Co-design techniques generally rely upon higher-order cognitive skills, such as abstraction and creativity, meaning they may be inaccessible to people with intellectual disabilities (ID). Consequently, investigators must adjust the methods employed throughout their studies to ensure the complex needs of people with ID are appropriately catered to. Yet, there are a lack of guidelines to support researchers in this process, with previous literature often neglecting to discuss the decisions made during the development of their study protocols. We propose a new procedure to overcome this lack of support, by utilizing the knowledge of "experts" in ID to design a more accessible workshop for the target population. 12 experts across two focus groups were successful in identifying accessibility barriers throughout a set of typical early co-design activities. Recommendations to overcome these barriers are discussed along with lessons on how to better support people with ID to engage in co-design. CCS CONCEPTS•Human-centered computing ~ Accessibility ~ Accessibility design and evaluation methods • Human-centered computing ~ Human computer interaction (HCI)

So, I Can Feel Normal: Participatory Design for Accessible Social Media Sites for Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury

“…Many of these existing tools, however, tended to only involve individuals with TBI in evaluation of developed prototypes by researchers (e.g., [56,80,84]). As such, it is relatively rare to involve individuals with TBI in the early ideation stage in the user-centered design cycle, which may limit the possibilities for identifying and addressing a variety of challenges and needs that they may face in their everyday lives [44,50].…”

Designing with and for People with Intellectual Disabilities

“…1.3.1 Design and Evaluation Methods. As highlighted, traditional human-computer interaction techniques often rely on a unique and generic skill set that may not reflect the diverse abilities of individual participants with intellectual disabilities [10,18]. For example, speech is typically at the centre of co-design methodologies, yet participants may find it difficult to present their views on complex or unfamiliar topics using their voice or natural language, or to people they do not know and trust [11,12,18,23,26,30].…”

The Ecosystem’s Involvement in the Appropriation Phase of Assistive Technology: Choice and Adjustment of Interaction Techniques

“…Gibson et al [12] have studied on how to better support adults with mild Intellectual disabilities to engage in codesign. Firstly, they conducted a review literature to identify research techniques that have been employed to codesign.…”

“…One of their outcomes recommend a variety of experts "the experts had to have five+ years' experience working with or caring for the target population i.e. individuals who adhered to the ID" [12] be employed within the focus groups to ensure design tasks are approached from different viewpoints and the optimal number of accessibility barriers are addressed before implementation with target stakeholders. Moreover, we think that the entire ecosystem has to be engaged in the design process.…”

“…Usually, codesign is performed with end-users. Several adaptations of the codesign tools have been proposed: for instance Gibson et al [12] suggested to take into account the knowledge of "experts" on disabilities; Hendricks et al [11] described research on dedicated methodological approach for involving people living with impairments in codesign projects. Our approach is different; we have set up a codesign method but with the ecosystem of the disabled person.…”