Accessibility: A tool for usability evaluation

Abstract

Infrastructure intended to support accessibility can be employed to provide useful information for the usability evaluation of graphical user interfaces. In this paper, we discuss how software infrastructure designed to augment assistive technologies for disabled users can be used to provide event information relevant to usability analysis. The problem is that extracting information about the interaction is difficult and there is no standard method for extracting complete event logs describing the interaction. Approaches to extract usability interactions so far have been ad-hoc, and on the whole quite complex to incorporate into logging systems. Encouraging support for accessibility generates a valuable, high-level channel of information for user interface evaluation and provides benefits to reach the broader user community. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.