AHFE Open AccessHuman Factors in Accessibility and Assistive Technology
Editors: Matteo Zallio
Topics: Human Factors and Assistive Technology
Publication Date: 2023
ISBN: 978-1-958651-63-6
DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003989
Articles
Investigating Health-Care Consumers’ Intention to Use Patient Decision Aids: An Empirical Study
Patient decision aids (PDAs) are designed to help patients participate in making specific choices concerning their care options in shared decision-making (SDM). Even though some practitioners and academics have emphasized how SDM enables hospitals to improve patient safety, the overall adoption of PDAs by patients remains low. This study developed an integrated model to explain health-care consumers’ intention to use PDAs. This theoretical model was empirically validated using online survey data from Taiwanese citizens aged at least 20 years. The structural equation model was used to examine the data. The 2,513 valid questionnaires obtained by this study constituted a response rate of 83.76%. The results revealed that e-health literacy had a positive influence on self-efficacy. The findings also indicated that self-efficacy, e-health literacy, functional value, social value, and emotional value had a positive effect on health-care consumers’ intention to use PDAs in SDM. The results of this study provide constructive suggestions to researchers, hospitals, and the government to increase the likelihood of SDM participation.
Pi-Jung Hsieh, Hui-Min Lai, Wen-Tsung Ku
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Mobile Site and Native App Accessibility Testing Methodology
The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Version 2.0 was released in 2008, prior to the universality of mobile devices that we see today. As a result it does not provide comprehensive testing for accessibility on systems that are displayed on those devices. The update to these guidelines, Version 2.1, does not adequately cover these requirements. Two methodologies have been created by a committee of accessibility specialists that cover the accessibility testing requirements for Mobile Sites and Native Apps. These guidelines have five steps: 1, Identify Devices; 2 (for Mobile Sites) Identify site types and variations, or 2 (for Native Apps) Define application functionality; 3, Test Critical issues; 4, Test mobile-specific issues; and 5, Test assistive technologies and mobile features.
Gian Wild
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Accessible Games Day: Building Successful Community Engagement
As games and gamification have become more intrinsically linked to both education and libraries, two librarians at a public university developed a tabletop gaming event in part to raise awareness of how games can be developed or modified in order to expand access to a larger population by addressing accessibility of play. While games work very well in building communities, much of the tabletop gaming industry does little to mitigate exclusionary design for individuals with disabilities. The vast majority of games use color alone to distinguish player pieces from each other despite the prevalence of various types of colorblindness. It is estimated that 8% of the male population experiences some form of colorblindness, and a lack of accommodation eliminates and alienates these players unnecessarily, as the simple addition of patterns, shapes, or textures corrects the issue. Using their expertise in game design and human factors, the authors carefully reviewed and play-tested multiple games for inclusion in the event. While no individual game can be created or modified to have universal accessibility, playing games with an eye toward accessibility is the only suitable way to best determine what games have better design. Providing descriptions and write-ups of what specific games do well (or poorly) along with tested modifications prompt players to consider how design can be improved for accessibility.Key to reaching a broad audience and ensuring a wide variety of perspectives, development of programming such as this requires cross-departmental partnerships. Faculty, students, and community members offer differing insights. Critical among these partnerships are disability support advocates. In Universities, this often takes the form of student services geared toward accommodations in class. In another successful partnership, the authors were able to promote the event within the structure of a university acculturation class. Student attendees were asked to write brief reflection papers, promoting greater engagement with the event and its educational goals. In developing events like these, the greatest expense comes from building game collections. While more familiar board games are generally quite affordable, these are generally among the worst when it comes to accessible design. That said, certain companies have created modified versions, including large print, braille, and tactile modifications. While these do expand human diversity in playability, most of these are post-market modifications which increases costs by as much as 500%. With the rising prevalence and falling costs of 3D printing and makerspaces, replacing or modifying the pieces and parts of existing games is far more effective, if the right facilities are available in your area. The authors will also share informational resources, including informational sites that will help in growing your own list of games suitable for playtesting, with factors such as popularity, time investment, complexity level, and design mechanics. 3D printing files are free or inexpensive, and multiple online communities devoted to accessibility in games can be found through both gaming and disabled perspectives.
Daniel Ireton, Angie Brunk
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Automotive Head-Up Displays (HUDs): Considerations for Color-limited Users
Head-Up-Displays (HUDs) were initially developed for use in aircraft to provide the pilot with essential aircraft flight information aid while flying. The HUD allows the pilot to view primary flight information overlaid on the external scene without the necessity of looking down inside the cockpit at their instruments. Thus they can maintain their gaze outside of the cockpit during critical phases of flight like landing while still having access to critical flight information like altitude, speed, and heading. HUDs have also been adapted to ground vehicles. The first production vehicle with a HUD was the General Motors Cutlass Supreme, in 1988 (Weihrauch et al., 1989). Over 30 companies have implemented this technology into select vehicle models (Korentsides et al., 2021). This technology is also gaining traction among aftermarket manufacturers that offer hardware that owners can integrate into their vehicles. Information typically displayed on a HUD includes safety alerts, navigation directions, and the status of vehicle parameters such as speed. The systems allow drivers to customize the information they see displayed and they can change the information based on the situation. Most HUDs employ a limited color palette of red, green, yellow, and sometimes blue to code information and to represent hazards or risks. Typically alphanumeric information in aviation and automotive applications is rendered in bright green that is visible across a wide range of external illumination conditions. The use of color in consumer products poses some challenges because approximately 8% of the male population and a much smaller percentage of women have color deficiencies that affect their ability to discriminate among some hues including the widely used red, green, and yellow hues (Chaparro & Chaparro, 2017). By recognizing this issue, designers, engineers, and human factors practitioners can ensure that all users, irrespective of their visual status, can use their systems safely. In this paper, we explore different strategies to ensure that information is accessible to users regardless of their visual status. The strategies include using redundant coding so that critical information is encoded using multiple stimulus dimensions (e.g., brightness, color, saturation, texture, font, etc). We also discuss the use of software applications that simulate how any color combination might appear to persons with different color limitations allowing designers to evaluate different color codes or palettes.
Andi St Clair, Alex Chaparro
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
A new conversational interaction concept for document creation and editing on mobile devices for visually impaired users
This paper describes the ongoing development of a conversational interaction concept that allows visually impaired users to easily create and edit text documents on mobile devices using mainly voice input. In order to verify the concept, a prototype app was developed and tested for both iOS and Android systems, based on the natural-language understanding (NLU) platform Google Dialogflow. The app and interaction concept were repeatedly tested by users with and without visual impairments. Based on their feedback, the concept was continuously refined, adapted and improved on both mobile platforms. In an iterative user-centred design approach, the following research questions were investigated: Can a visually impaired user rely mainly on speech commands to efficiently create and edit a document on mobile devices? User testing found that an interaction concept based on conversational speech commands was easy and intuitive for visually impaired users. However, it was also found that relying on speech commands alone created its own obstacles, and that a combination of gestures and voice interaction would be more robust. Future research and more extensive useability tests should be carried out among visually impaired users in order to optimize the interaction concept.
Alireza Darvishy, Zeno Heeb, Edin Beljulji, Hans-Peter Hutter
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Neuro Digital Experiences for Adaptive Museums
The interaction between humans, space and advanced technologies evolves into a relationship of “confluence”, a “symbiosis” between the users’ diversified needs and the potential of technologies to return tailored experiences. Being able to analyze the users’ behavior and their cognitive and perceptual-sensory processes enables the structuring of adaptive experiences that place the user at the center of the process of learning and understanding cultural content. The paper provides a critical-analytical recognition of the current models of fruition and interaction used in museum environments with reference to “digital neuro-experiences”. In this regard, “information interchange” contributes to enhance the visitor experience, enabling the activation of a “silent dialogue” between visitors and artefacts and outlining adaptive trajectories with new opportunities for the valorization of cultural heritage.
Maria Laura Nappi, Sonia Capece, Camelia Chivăran, Elena Laudante, Mario Buono
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Design, Human Factors and Neuroergonomics for safety in manufacturing
Occupational safety research has been directed toward defining the areas of most significant concern in identifying specific areas of psychosocial risk. Modern workplaces need to address the complex relationship between work, technology, health, and well-being. The Operator 4.0 must retain a high level of attention, reactivity, and accuracy while interacting physically with machines and robots that do intellectual activities. Proper design of work activities and workstations must consider the cognitive load and anthropometry of the worker by involving the worker in the risk assessment to improve occupational safety through neuro-ergonomics approaches and measuring neural signatures of performance with various neuroimaging techniques, including functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalogram (EEG). Based on international standards and literature research on the main databases, the analysis and characterization of interaction performance parameters is carried out by bringing together the principles of neuroergonomics, User Centred Design and New Human Factors including performance shaping factors (PSF). Specifically, the research work compares a collection of studies focusing on technologies for sensing brain parameters through neuroimaging in a laboratory setting to provide the tools to structure a reliable, adaptable, and easily replicable testing protocol through a multidisciplinary approach. It’s necessary to develop guidelines for the neuro-ergonomic design of human-machine-robot interaction in Industry 4.0 environments to improve operator safety and health by defining good practices.
Ilaria Lombardi, Victor Fernando Muñoz Martínez, Vincenzo Paolo Senese, Sonia Capece
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Stimulation and visibility of flashing lights with different illuminance
In this study, we performed a demonstration experiment to determine a highly visible light emission pattern while feeling that the stimulus is suppressed using sensory evaluation. We performed sensory evaluation of stimulus intensity and visibility of simple blinking that repeats on and off and fade-in/fade-out blinking that gradually brightens and fades to investigate the trade-off relationship between stimulus adaptation and arousal. In the experiment, we compared the light-emitting blocks that are constantly lit, simple blinking, and fade-in/fade-out blinking and clarified the relationship of the blinking stimulus with visibility. In this experiment, subjects underwent the sensory evaluation for three types of environmental illuminance (20 lx, 50 lx, and 100 lx) and were asked to evaluate the strength of stimulation, visibility, and discomfort of each blinking pattern using normal light as a reference. When the surrounding illuminance was low (20 lx), the overall evaluation value was higher because the fade-in/fade-out flashing was less stimulating and easier to find. Conversely, when the ambient illuminance was high (50 lx), simple blinking was more stimulating and easier to find, and the overall evaluation value was higher. Although it was a simple blinking, it seemed that the visibility for the visually impaired had been secured. Moreover, in the case of 100 lx, the difference in the illuminance between the surroundings and the light-emitting block was small; therefore, finding the light-emitting block in both simple blinking and fade-in/fade-out blinking was difficult, and the overall evaluation value was very low. It was found that simple or fade-in/fade-out blinking is selected depending on the ambient illuminance. By installing light-emitting blocks that blink in an optimal blinking pattern at the entrance of a crosswalk, it is expected that the blinking will be effective in guiding the visually impaired while considering pedestrians and the surrounding environment.
Shoichiro Fujisawa, Shoya Nishimori, Yoshifuru Atsuta, Kenji Sakami, Jiro Morimoto, Jyunji Kawata, Yoshio Kaji, Mineo Higuchi, Shin-Ichi Ito, Tomoyuki Inagaki
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Vibration measurement and verification of ride comfort when a manual attendant-controlled wheelchair is running
The tire pressure of manual attendant-controlled wheelchairs was measured in four patterns of 80 kPa, 160 kPa, 240 kPa, and 320 kPa. The number of trials for each of the four patterns of tire pressure was 10 times for a total of 40 times. The maximum power spectrum, frequency at the maximum power spectrum, and integral value were obtained from the FFT analysis data for the acceleration in three directions measured using the triaxial accelerometer, and the trends due to changes in tire pressure were evaluated. Tire pressure indicators made for this study were attached to both rear wheels of the manual attendant-controlled wheelchairs, and a dummy weight of 50 kgf was placed on the seat. Acceleration in three directions, including up/down, front/back, and left/right directions, was measured using a three-axis accelerometer attached to a heavy object. The tire pressure of the manual wheelchair for assistance was measured in four patterns of 80 kPa, 160 kPa, 240 kPa, and 320 kPa. The number of trials for each of the four patterns of tire pressure was 10 times for a total of 40 times. FFT analysis was performed using numerical analysis software for acceleration in three directions measured using a triaxial accelerometer. The maximum power spectrum, frequency at the maximum power spectrum, and integral value were obtained from the FFT-analyzed data, and the relationship with tire pressure was verified. Riding comfort was evaluated using the SD method, and the following two types of evaluation were performed: stationary and running. For both static and running conditions, the evaluation consisted of three items, including sitting comfort, sense of security, and sitting comfort of the buttocks, and four items, including the strength of shaking while running. Responses were obtained on a five-point scale from 1 to 5. Consequently, in this study, an air pressure indicator for English valves was attached to manual attendant-controlled wheelchairs, and vibration measurements were performed under controlled conditions. As a result of experiments using the manufactured vibration measuring device, it was found that the vibration tends to increase as the tire pressure rises. Furthermore, it was found that the higher the tire pressure, the worse the ride comfort.
Shunsuke Jutori, Sekiya Tada, Soma Taniguchi, Ryoya Mihara, Jyunji Kawata, Jiro Morimoto, Yoshio Kaji, Mineo Higuchi, Masayuki Booka, Toru Yamamoto, Shoichiro Fujisawa
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings