Incorporating clinical diagnoses in the prediction of performance on computer-based tasks for low vision users

Abstract

Researchers focusing on investigations of human-computer interaction are developing a heightened awareness of the challenges that impede universal access to information technologies. Furthermore, researchers are acknowledging that low vision computer users represent a sizeable portion of the computing community for whom information technologies must be made available if we are to claim successful universal access.The low vision computing community represents a vast array of visual capabilities and limitations. Thus, it has been challenging for researchers to characterize this community in a meaningfully empirical way. As a result, research and design to-date have depicted low vision computer users as a single collection of individuals possessing comparable capabilities, limitations and needs. The danger is that researchers and designers overlook the individual differences in low vision computer users that render each of them more or less able to effectively utilize computing technologies.Investigations of human-computer interactions should include clinical profiles that capture the essence of the visual capabilities of the population in question. This will enable adequate representation of the individual differences that exist between low vision computer users. In addition, we must understand (Jacko & Sears, 1998):•• how a person's visual profile drives system configuration choices,• how changes in one's visual profile motivate transitions from one configuration to another, and• how visual profiles drive the interaction strategies that are adopted during task execution.The author, a member of the ACM and Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was awarded a five-year, $500,000 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) to investigate these and related issues in her research titled, "Universal Access to the Graphical User Interface: Design for the Partially Sighted." Jacko was one of twenty National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported researchers to receive the award.The research is a collaborative effort with ophthalmologists from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami School of Medicine, the Digital Signal Processing Laboratory at Florida International University, and The Miami Lighthouse for the Blind.