Scripting Enabled - Jonathan Hassell on Dyslexia

Jonathan Hassell Head of Audience Experience and Usability BBC UX&D Scripting Enabled 19 th September 2008 Dyslexia barriers

What I’m going to talk about…
some info on dyslexia… and other literacy-related difficulties
what some of the barriers are…
what helps…
what you could do to help…
NB. I am indebted to others’ research – where sourced outside the BBC, all images in this presentation hyperlink to the research documents/websites they are taken from…

think across all disabilities (each has a different challenge)
make sure you actually make things multi -modal via personalisation
Access it – access services like TV
subtitling vs. captioning
audio description
signing
Control it
tabbing down to one key is do-able…
structured/hierarchical + intelligence is best (http://www.ics.forth.gr/hci/ua-games/ua-chess/play.html)
Feel it and navigate it – immersive environments
Generally good for many
Alternative interfaces - try Second Life via a text adventure interface
spatial/3D audio for blind people
talk to Gamelab or the IGDA-SIG on games accessibility
On games (off/wider-topic)

Literacy difficulties – some stats…
1,900,000 in the UK have some form of dyslexia (source: BDA)
1,100,000 adults in the UK have a reading age of 5 or less ( source: Skills for Life National Needs and Impact Survey, DfES, 2003)
500,000 UK children, have ADD or ADHD (source: National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) Guidance)
not to mention:
people with learning difficulties
people for whom English is not their first language

Barriers: dyslexia
Common symptoms
Letter reversals – d for b
Word reversals – tip for pit
Inversions – m for w, u for n
Transpositions – felt for left
Rivers of words – being drawn to the spaces…
Other useful refs:
http://www.dyslexic.com/vision

Barriers: dyslexia
A simulation
Where to get it: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~cvnb1/dyslexsim/

Web 2.0 is about contributing…
they may want to contribute… but words are the problem
so they might not want to add to wikipedia, as they didn’t want to email into “have your say?”
Compare the task of “email friends” in Facebook (for example) to Outlook (for example)
but they might if the site’s text entry mechanism includes a spell-checker…
you can find AJAX ones on the web if you try
and they might win Upstaged if they upload their video contribution to it…
Barriers: and it’s not just reading…

Solutions: dyslexia and web/print
reading
non-white page backgrounds
gels, overlays and coloured lenses ( 50% of 7-11 yr olds reported improvements )
easier to read fonts
bigger fonts
shorter lines
better page structure
“ easy read”
more concise text – bullet points
simpler vocabulary (Plain English, reading ages…)
Other useful refs:
http://www.dyslexic.com/vision

Solutions: dyslexia and multimedia
or you could try not using words…
audio (podcasts, audiobooks)
diagrams, pictures, animations, videos

Solutions: dyslexia and web personalisation
If you do have to use text, and you don’t want it to look like this for everyone…
Try and use personalisation…
In a BBC study (2008), dyslexic users were
receptive to amending fonts, colours and word spacing and found the resulting customisations improved the readability of the page
But they would often avoid changing settings regularly out of laziness, lack of customisation tools or embarrassment
if you have to share your computer with others…
None had ever imported their own stylesheet, nor did they know how to do so
Voicing tools were also very well received although concerns about their controllability were commonplace.

Barriers: ADHD, LD, Aspergers
ADHD users – keep the text short
may “get bored” if pages are text heavy
may have to read information twice because they have not taken any of it in
may suffer issues with concentration so the manner and style in which information is presented can influence them either positively or negatively (ie. they may get bored if it’s not brief and fun)
may want to go straight to what they want – e.g. traditional search engines could provide ‘too many results’
LD users
may find complex language and jargon make pages difficult to understand
NB. some people with more severe LDs may not understand the concept of customisation at all, or find it so hard to use they don’t bother
Autistic users:
may have issues with memory, so try and avoid things requiring this
long lists of audio instructions
inability to remember passwords may make social networking difficult

Solutions: dyslexia, ADHD, LD, Aspergers…
All of these benefit from customisable font size, colour etc.
As do those with a low-level vision impairment
In a BBC study (2007), low-vision users:
had greater experience of customisation using browser and hardware settings than others who would also benefit
one participant (who had retinitis pigmentosa) required to amend monitor brightness.
one of the participants said that he regularly browsed the web wearing sunglasses to reduce screen glare.
high visibility settings were most important to these participants.
certain high visibility combinations could cause visual ‘interference’ (yellow on black in one case) so there was a requirement to allow easy selection of colours.
one of the participants advised that any customisation tool would need to be able to take into account both his needs and his family’s requirement for ordinary browsing.

Solutions: dyslexia, ADHD, LD, Aspergers…
All of these benefit from customisable font size, colour etc.
As do those with a low-level vision impairment
In a BBC study (2007), low-vision users:
had greater experience of customisation using browser and hardware settings than others who would also benefit
one participant (who had retinitis pigmentosa) required to amend monitor brightness.
one of the participants said that he regularly browsed the web wearing sunglasses to reduce screen glare.
high visibility settings were most important to these participants.
certain high visibility combinations could cause visual ‘interference’ (yellow on black in one case) so there was a requirement to allow easy selection of colours
one of the participants advised that any customisation tool would need to be able to take into account both his needs and his family’s requirement for ordinary browsing.

That recent BBC research…
Tested with 15 users with the following disabilities:
7 x Dyslexia
2 x Learning Difficulties
2 x Low/Poor Vision
4 x Cognitive Impairment
Of those, at the start:
Only 4 users regularly customised their web experience.
The remaining users were split between:-
Those who were unaware of page customisation tools.
Those who were aware but didn’t use them as they felt that they were for users more disabled than themselves.
There was some awareness, particularly amongst dyslexic users, of browser controlled customisations.
Only low vision and dyslexic users had any awareness of assistive technology

Reviewing BBC Display Options A good selection of presets is really useful, but can be inflexible… So provide more options too, and a way of previewing their effect…

Throwing the baby out with the bath-water?
While these are simpler… and could be useful for low-vision groups…
… and the ability to distinguish links from non-link text was critical to the dyslexic, cognitive and low vision groups…
people were not receptive to text only pages on the whole.
They would prefer to labour on and use a graphics heavy page, even if a text only page was available

Dyslexia sites using Textic toolbar
NB. note the black on yellow/beige – colours that dyslexics prefer
people generally +ve about the toolbar - clear to use, instant feedback, liked being able to change the font typeface
positioning is crucial for findability
speech can be very useful, if under the user’s control (see also Browsealoud, ReadSpeaker)

Summary of findings…
Awareness/education
Participants were generally unaware of onsite customisation tools.
The customisation system needs to be findable…
Perception that customisation was ‘too much effort’ and that it could draw unwanted attention to their disability.
Awareness of assistive technology was very low, although some dyslexic participants had used page reader software for non-web content.
Barriers/solutions
Participants were receptive to the idea of customisations
The “Three A’s” tools were well received but in many cases the individual settings were not clearly understood.
Suggested common settings included:-
Text size
Text and background colour
Line and character spacing
Speech controls
Participants expressed the opinion that more customisation controls were better than less, and wanted to control each setting as a separate entity.
What they really want…
They understood that settings would persist across the site where they were but not across subsequent sites.
They wanted a ‘one size fits all’ solution for customising the users web experience across all sites

What you could do to help…
Why not just use the browser?
font resizing isn’t enough…
and many people don’t know of that option in the browser
Ideally users would like need customisation solutions that work across
all technologies (e.g. Flash as well as HTML…)
all sites (can be applied to existing sites without changing them)
Inspired?

Any questions…
?
Contact: jonathan.hassell@bbc.co.uk

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Scripting Enabled - Jonathan Hassell on Dyslexia

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Scripting Enabled - Jonathan Hassell on Dyslexia Presentation Transcript