Introduction
Essential changes have occurred in the previous decade in the disabled people’s position within the society and the community. A multitude of factors has led towards the formation of newer legislations, regulations and standards in various countries to focus on removing present discrimination against disabled individuals and allow them to take part completely in the domains of education, employment and other services in the community (Bowles, 2011). Such factors are inclusive of increasing the awareness regarding advantage to the society on the whole when involvement and disable person's independence are increased as well as increasing the assertion and activities by disabled people’s organizations.
As the intended users to assistive technology as people with disability and those with visual impairment, the assistive technology definition is dependent upon the disability model or definition being utilized. Henceforth, prior to taking into consideration the assistive technology definitions, the distinct disability models need to be understood under medical and social models. The models of medical nature have its basis on impairment and disability based international classification developed under the framework of WHO. Impairment by WHO is defined as any abnormality of psychological, anatomical or physical or functional nature. Disability then happens when impairment prevents an individual from having the ability of performing an activity in the way or within the range taking into consideration normal from the perspective of an individual (Bowles, 2011). Therefore the view of the medical model on disability resides in individuals and focuses over the impairment of the person as a disadvantaged cause leading towards occupational therapy approaches and needs of rehabilitation. It should be acknowledged that disabled individual organizations do not like the term “handicap” and therefore its usage will not be done within this paper.
The disability social model focuses on physical and social challenges that disabled and visually impaired individuals experience instead of impairment from the perspective of society. The focus will be over individual perspective. It is compatible with disabled people empowerment and centric over users.
With regard to this model, the assistive technology aim lies in overcoming the gap present between what a disabled individual requires to do and what the present social infrastructure permits them to do. It is inclusive of tools, devices and software’s that can be used for overcoming barriers of societal and infrastructural nature experienced through disabled individuals and visually impaired people. Measuring the influence and outcomes of a specific technology can be used for determining whether the desired advantage can be obtained or not and for informing advanced developments. In the situation of assistive technology, improvised outcome to monitor could have an influence over improvising the match of device for user and the service provision quality which is specifically essential from the perspective that device abandonment of higher level is prevalent (Bowles, 2011). This can also enhance accountability and provide extra evidence for supporting demands on public funding increase for assistive technologies. Relatively less focus, however has been given to assistive technology outcome assessment for various reasons inclusive of the view that its advantages are general, a focus over the technological performance instead of interaction of user with technological advancement and relatively lesser demand from the perspective of stakeholder.
As assistive technology outcomes measurement become more general, it will become increasingly essential to focus over relevant results production instead of completely presenting documents of routine development.
Assistive technology outcomes measurement needs to take into consideration human along with assistive systems of technology instead of simply focusing on the technological performance individually. The measures of outcome need to be designed for the perspective wherein assistive technology has been used in actual manner (Bowles, 2011). They need to take into consideration the perspective that people in a frequent manner make use of various devices as assistive technology and that the influence of such devices is dependent over the application perspective and kind of assistive technology along with the characteristics of end use. The measurable outcomes need to be adaptive to allow for measurement of both the particular influence of a specific assistive device over the life quality of a specific disabled or visually impaired individuals and the influence of a specific technology or technology type on a particular disabled people group.
Both measurements that are objective and subjective are essential. Measurements of objective nature are inclusive of measuring the human assistive technology systems perspective and the way in which they provide services such as the time required through the user of the device when reading information set. Measures of subjective nature are inclusive of user satisfaction based subjective assessment in relation to the device and any change resulted in life quality of the user. In certain situations, it might be problematic to remove changes because of the assistive device from those. Therefore, for instance, it may be problematic to determine the way in which life quality can be improved because of the assistive device provision and regular use and how much is the consequence of for example, a move to a new house close to friends.
Subjective life quality based studies are commonly dependent upon surveys. The survey process nature implies that it is majorly unlikely that every respondent will complete every question (Bowles, 2011). The problem of, however, how the response with the missing solutions to certain questions needs to be treated and has not yet been responded to.
The number of mobile phones in the market has also increased. This has brought in the urge to use the smart phones for benefitting the whole community. This cannot be a one-time change that leads towards future advancements but requires thoughtful processing of data and its assumptions. Over the past 3 decades, the reduced infant mortality and increased expectancy of life, collectively has led towards population demographics to restructure in UK and also in other parts of the world. The projections in the population further suggest that following the 20th century, the old population groups will consistently be expanding especially in the second quarter of 21st century. As users start growing older, their requirements will further keep changing. Designers need to have sensitivity to the changing needs of users along with designing for themselves as they once will also become older (Bowles, 2011). The old customers may have a good hold over retirement income, but when children grow up and mortgages are paid off, it becomes difficult for them to sustain their living. With financial struggle, comes the struggle they face physically within an environment that can enforce out of impairment disability. Disability by impairment is followed by inadequate resources and no support of the people around them. Impairment of a visual nature takes various forms ranging from partial vision loss through towards completing blindness. Age can influence old individuals in various ways in terms of visual and physical impairment.
Need for Inclusive Designs
The aim of inclusive designs is on catering as many users as is possible and including them. Therefore this process involves incorporation of diverse requirement of users which is more of a designed philosophy instead of being an end result. The premise underlying this philosophy is the perspective that it should allow and not exclude the distinct groups of users (Bowles, 2011). The aim is not specifically of achieving a universalized solution but to have a more pragmatic approach and offer support to distinct users through formation of solutions that have a generic design suiting the particular requirements. An inclusive design mode has been provided by Keates and Clearkson, 2004 which is inclusive of elements such as needs of the users, perception of the users, cognition of the users, motor function of the users and the usability inclusive of evaluating and validating usability and its access.
The model further highlights the inclusive design complexity from analysing the needs of the users through to evaluate and validate the design solutions usability. To be able to achieve this, the needs of the users have to be recognized with regard to design problem representation, interaction structure between designed solution and the user as well as control quality and input quality based on the comfort of the user (Bowles, 2011). If such aspects are considered then the solution of the design should have access among users and therefore should have an inclusive nature. If designs have an inclusive nature than their implementation at the initiation of the complete process of design, then options of design can be evaluated using an iteration based manner. For older individuals this can imply that the particular requirements of users are understood. Through incorporation of methods for human factors, involve users and various designers, it becomes possible to develop and sustain inclusion by the process of design. This should further support up-taking and using actual services and products.
Design research for human factors supports designs that have an inclusive nature. A user centred approach is offered by human factors consideration that helps in ensuring the fit between the needs of the users and their design as well as their requirements.
Objectives
This study is based on the following specific objectives:
Research significance
There is tremendous significance of conducting this research as seen from third person perspective. This can be said because the field has various identified gaps and each of these gaps need to be addressed in order to ensure that technology helps in solving some of the challenges of the selected user group. Designs of mobile phones have now evolved with young users kept in perspective but mobile phone technology access can further help in offering old users with an opportunity of maintaining life quality. As mobile technologies and wearable devices, furthermore start evolving, they further offer tools to monitor health and sustain inclusion in the society as well as connectivity in the community through networking such as the information center. Such solutions of communication are designed particularly for adults can further integrate old individuals and help them sustain independent living style especially when they are visually impaired or have any physical disability. However, with advancement of technology paves way to increasingly complicated life for these people as they are exposed to services which they are not familiar with and which can further actually isolate them if not designed for supporting their requirements (Bowles, 2011). Old users have understood various issues with use of mobile applications such as display been too small to visualize for them, poor quality of sound and preferring to depict input from speech. All these problems can be mapped in a direct manner to the continuum of performance related influence. These functional improvement issues may be applicable to every user to some range and serve towards highlighting the significance of inclusive designing to meet not only the needs of old users but also assist other individuals.
The mobile phone screen display to various old users presents a challenge of use for many of them. These devices are used in all environments with varied illumination levels but they should be accommodated through displaying designs and screening. Old users may have to suffer a deterioration of capacity for using mini screen as accommodation of optical nature that is weakly rated. It is possible to support poor vision through tactile feedback in a way that it ease’s the procedure to communicate (Bullock et al, 2007). Public areas phone use can be susceptible to the noise in the background which often interferes with input of auditory nature. The inability of distinguishing complicated sounds often can make communication problematic in an increasing manner for old users and hearing equipment can also influence the usage of mobile phones causing interference of audible nature ranging from being irritable to masking the entire process of communication.
Therefore there are various such issues that need to be looked into when devising assistive technological systems that help in simplifying the life style of disabled individuals and those who are visually impaired especially in the population of older people. Even though various mainstream devices do not cater to the need of these users, there are various technological devise that need to be brought to the forefront. This research seeks to investigate the domain due to the evident gap present in literature and practical domain of research topic.
As the physically and visually impaired individuals do not always require the smartphone visual display, the generally sleek form factor of a device can become a major input device. Being said that, providing inputs as needed can lead towards transformation which can cause some disintegrated data to be present.
Focusing over designing with the aim of using and wider environment prove to be a challenging task. Processing skills speed, abilities of memory and limitation of reaction time can influence over the perspective of exclusion cell which designers require to have awareness on. A user consideration in perspective may depict that old individuals find themselves using technological devices with enhanced problems and issues that grow complicated with complicating environment externally (Coleman, 2011). They find themselves in deep trouble when left alone with these devices therefore there is a clear need to change their perspective by providing them better support through technological advancement.
It is essential to take into consideration that design of mobile phone is a holistic system and there are standards of providing design related in-depth requirement and such systems usability. From the perspective of the standards, the dial ahead designs as functions that help in fast tracking. There are other designs as well such as to handle out time (Dishman, 2012). When inclusive design is targeted upon, it is important to take into consideration the capability of system for speeding up or slowing down the time of response and giving control for individual customers. An example can be quoted here of time prompts between every response tailored through the user by the help of key pad with the main aim to provide empowerment to users who use the systems.
Development of more inclusive network of mobile is something that the program of COST has been looked at for various years as part of a European cooperation inter-governmental. It has published mobile phones guidelines. The guidelines provide a generic and universalized gesture to explore the nature of these devices with regard to enhancing their usage (Coleman et al, 2012). The customers aging society has various particular needs which require to incorporate a mobile phone design. Inclusive design is a guiding philosophy which can allow users and more particularly the old population to take an active role within society by designing solutions that support their requirements. However, too often particularly with rapidly technological development, such a group is excluded from benefiting from the technological development. The inclusive design offers various advantages and approaches of user centric approach is needed in order to depict a consistent change that disabled individuals face too often. The failure of including the requirement of old people is because of various factors that construct an exclusion cell not only in the designing expectations but those of old people and the society on the whole (Earthy et al, 2012). Therefore the significance of this research can be advanced from the ignorance that this user group often faces.
Research motivation
This project’s motivation lies in the perspective that increasing number of disabled individuals are not able to cope up with their daily lives. If technology can offer them a prominent support then different ways should be looked at in order to explore technological aids that can help these people. There is increased prevalence of disability and visual issues in old age people. As the environment external to an individual is dynamic in nature, technology changes in order to reflect various ways of adapting to the external environment (Mladenov et al 2009). Still, there are restricted aids and tools in the field of disability reflecting the need to innovate and explore within the field. Governments, experts in technological domain and designers often explore the idea of sustainable future with development of smart cities wherein everything is integrated and is designed with the conception of inclusive designing in perspective. The main concern of this paper will be the population groups experiencing mobile and visual impairment. For example, an individual in wheelchair due to physical disability or a man who cannot see. Basic technology has not yet managed to innovate wheelchair on the whole ever since it was invented and it still is, in a way integrated with basic traditional technology. From the way it appears and the way it feels to the people using the wheelchair and the way it functions, it is clear that not much thought is given to develop its design with innovations in order to make it feel better to its users (Elder et al, 2010). Considering a person with partial sight or complete blindness, technologies may be there to help him or her feel the way in which things are positioned around them but this does not offer much insight to them on how they appear or what it feels to see around them.
Most of the social infrastructure in most nations is organized based on the assumption that all society members have their complete vision. Most nations sustain systems of transport that are costly which depend mainly over the ability of sighted owners of car for driving through an elaborate network of road. Given the priorities of organizations and finances, the requirements of citizens with visual and physical impairment are not addressed in the most accurate manner. This is a fact, as per (Bartes et al, 2008) that has led towards creating various challenges which individuals with visual impairment need to deal with on everyday basis. Some of the challenges that visually impaired and physically impaired individuals face can be overcome in a potential manner by software’s that are simple, cheap but assistive running over modern applications of smart phones. In this thesis, various such systems of mobile accessibility will be explored to address important and practical requirements of users that are visually impaired. Many such tools are inclusive of: (Etchell et al, 2010)
A tool for navigation present over mobile to provide users with visual and physical impairment with directions in environments that are not known to them indoor
An application of Brailler on mobile for users that are visually impaired by entering text over touch pads
A system to recognize the bills of currency through use of cameras in mobile phones
A system to determine the clothes that can be worn collectively through use of camera in mobile phone.
In this research, designing, evaluation and implementation of various such applications are identified.
In a complicated building such as an airport, a blind person would require specific support from a staff member of the airport in order to make them find their way through the building (Fisk, 2011). Basic technology is available for blind people such as guiding dogs and walking sticks to help them move around but this should be the case in a technologically oriented world where life is becoming more and more dependent on technological systems. The smart future view of global leaders, I believe, does not consider this issue.
If innovation integrated in technology has changed the way in which people visualize movies, their selves and the way in which they purchase clothes, then a definite change is required that re-innovates the way in which people with mobile or visual impairment live their daily lives.
However the mainstream of technology has started taking this issue in perspective such as the popular personal tracking devices emergence, Nike Fuel band and Fitbit Flex and Google Glass introduction but these devices also do not offer complete support to people with physical and visual impairment (Gym et al, 2010). The need for more innovation continues to persist demanding for more research uniquely presented within this area.
The World Wide Web rise has particularly boosted the access of users that are visually impaired and physically impaired for information which was available before and only through the assistance of human reader with site. The widespread availability, furthermore for free mapping services has allowed visually impaired individual position to locate and explore interest places prior to actually visiting the place that is by removing certain obstacles. According to a lawsuit filed by a blind advocate firm, the currency of America is not accessible to people who are blind and physically impaired as all the dollars and capital amounts have the similar shape and lack any marking of tactile nature making it inconvenient for them to use the currency in daily transactions and even face much risk. While getting dressed, individuals who are visually impaired and physically disabled still have to face the issue on what clothes set they can comfortably wear and what they are wearing. Technology should have the ability to provide them with such benefit. Even though the mobile phone has, finally provided various advantages to the population of visually impaired, but still to fulfil their communication and mobility requirements in a successful manner has been a problem (Haigh, 2013). The touch screen phones presence has created newer challenges of accessibility particularly in the text entry real. Provided that texting is communication based ubiquitous form, any such challenge with regard to entering text over devices with touch screen can influence the social interaction quality in a negative manner and cannot be enjoyed through individuals who are visually impaired and physically disabled. This thesis therefore is motivated to deliver a solution to the above mentioned challenges through design and test on various applications and their future drawbacks discussed with regard to the area of interest.
5. Methods used
There are 4 stages in which the project is divided. This follows the design method of CDIO. This stage is the stage of conceiving which is mostly focused on understanding the issue within research. This thesis is the end result of this stage. The stage of this design is mostly on making use of data collected for coming up with a detailed specification by user related to designing, concepts and attempting at solving the issue under investigation (HFES, 2001). The phase of implementation is mostly focused on refining the thought process, developing experimentation model and ensuring that dissolution is aligned with the user specification and the design used. The operating stage will be next which will mostly focus on prototype testing and that play finish touch to any kind of models that have been developed during the phase of implementation. This stage also needs a detailed report to support it in the end. The Ideo design principles will be used inclusive of design thinking and human centric designs. The procedure will be designed for fitting in an individual session. It will initiate with backend surveys followed through semi-structured interviews over present use of devices. The interview will further cover various themes as the questionnaire included use of various wearable devices.
Prior work has depicted that talking devices and mode of speakerphone can lead towards issues of privacy for users who are physically or visually impaired, an issue that can be magnified with the multimodal interaction of smartphone. For both, input of speech and the use of screen-reader have shown to cause privacy issues among the participant groups. Therefore ethical issues will be sorted out prior to beginning with the research study and data collection.
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