When universal access is not quite universal enough: case studies and lessons to be learned

Abstract

While the theory of designing for Universal Access is increasingly understood, there remain persistent issues over realising products and systems that meet the goal of being accessible and usable by the broadest possible set of users. Clearly, products or services that are designed without even considering the needs of the wider user base are implicitly going to struggle to be universally accessible. However, even products that have been designed, knowing that they are to be used by broad user bases frequently still struggle to achieve the ambition of being universally accessible. This paper examines a number of such products that did not achieve, at least initially, the desired level of universal accessibility. Principal recommendations from each case study are presented to provide a guide to common issues to be avoided.

Universal Access: The Challenges Ahead

“…The issues around basic interaction science are still not fully resolved [30]. While there is a growing body of research into computer access there is still an unacceptably high number of people who experience difficulty interacting with a computer [31].…”

Defining Recommendations to Guide User Interface Design: Multimethod Approach

“…Digital solutions and their interfaces must be accessible to all audiences and aimed at universal use in an era of increasingly heterogeneous users [3,4,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Therefore, designers should also be aware of broad and complex issues such as context-oriented design, user requirements, and adaptable and adaptive interactive behaviors [5].…”