The Boston Chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA), a nonprofit organization and active community for professionals in the usability field, held an evening roundtable event on July 20th in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Stata Center in Cambridge. The roundtable discussion focused on how and why usability and accessibility work together.

Several of the leading experts in the field including MIT Usability Consultant, Katherine Wahl, MIT Accessibility Consultant, Stephani Roberts  and Manager of the MIT Assistive Technology Information Center (ATIC), Mary Zielger, spoke at the event about their work on developing new methodologies and work processes by combining the two practices.

Katherine Wahl and Stephani Roberts started the evening talking about MIT’s Information Services & Technology (IS&T) Accessibility & Usability Group and how it is working to shape the two practices so they become more prevalent in the ever evolving landscape of online development.  The interaction between the two disciplines has been widely debated, but the actual adoption of each practice has been slow. Katherine and Stephani have combined their expertise to craft a more defined vision of how usability and accessibility will impact website development going forward.

Usability vs. Accessibility: What’s the difference?

To better understand the work that Katherine and Stephani are undertaking, let’s quickly review the meaning of each practice. Usability is defined, in relation to the online environment as “a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use,” according to Dr. Jakob Nielson, a user advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group. Dr. Nielson also refers to the word "usability" as “methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.”

Additional components that make up usability, according to the expert, include:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Accessibility is defined as, “a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity.”  In other words, usability defines the user’s experience and how easy or difficult the service, product or website they are using is or is not. Accessibility relates to how the product, service or website has been designed, built, or administered so that the largest spectrum of users from all walks of life can have an equal opportunity to seek and use the information provided by the above resources.

Accessibility differs from usability because “accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities or special needs and their right of access to entities, often through use of assistive technology,” whereas usability describes “the extent to which a product (e.g., device, service, environment) can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” The convergence of these methodologies is where Katherine and Stephani have made great advances while working within the IS&T team. The process and implementation of both approaches had previously been developed separately, which is why the similarities, benefits and qualities had never been so closely scrutinized until Katherine and Stephani began their work at MIT. 

The MIT ATIC has defined General Web Accessibility Guidelines, which can be found on their website, to help designers and website owners ensure that website content is accessible for the widest possible audience.

Discovering Assistive Technology

The second speaker of the evening was Mary Ziegler, the manager of the MIT IS&T Accessibility and Usability Group, who provided insight on “Understanding Assistive and Accessible Technology.”  Mary and her team have developed tools and software that were demonstrated at the event. Although she did not have enough time to go through all of the advanced tools, Mary did get the chance to show us a virtual keyboard, which included a fully customizable user interface and an advanced voice recognition software package, which impressed many UPA members in attendance.

The virtual keyboard allows users to collect information as the cursor hovers over words and numbers as it moves across a fully customizable keyboard layout. The program then produces a selection of “most used” words based on that selection. For example, if the user hovers over “D” then “O” then “G: the first logical term would be “dog.” The program then calls out the words to the user via computer speakers and if they are accurate the user can then choose to add them to the document. The application is intended for users with restrictive physical disabilities, but could relate to more mainstream educational and business environments in the future.

The voice recognition software was calibrated to serve a number of speech patterns and provide superior predictive glossary for users while using the program. Similar to the first demonstration, the future long-term assistive technology and mainstream application of this program was intriguing. All in attendance agreed to be interested in seeing the future iterations of these and their other projects.  You can read about the work Mary Ziegler and the IS&T team have done in their recent case study.

The evening finished up with a short discussion of the evening’s presentation and a highlight of the upcoming UPA events.