This document discusses universal usability and how to design products and websites to be usable by all people. It defines universal usability and outlines seven principles of universal design, including equitable use, flexibility, simplicity, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and appropriate size and space. The document also provides statistics on internet usage in India to demonstrate the need for universal usability when designing for diverse groups of people. It recommends designing beyond a typical user, supporting adaptation through flexibility, user control, and keyboard functionality, as well as including text equivalents for non-text content.

1. UNIVARSAL
USABILITY
Nasimul Gani
Reg No. 18352033
Course-MCA
Session-2018-2021
Pondicherry University

2. Contents
◦ What is Usability?
◦ Usability
◦ Why usability is important?
◦ How to improve Usability?
◦ What s Universal Usability?
◦ Universal Usability
◦ 7 Principles of Universal Design
◦ Some Stats sowing internet penetration and growth in India and World
◦ What is the need of Universal Usability?
◦ How to implement Universal usability?
◦ Refrerences

3. What is Usability?
◦ Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined
goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily.
◦ Usability is defined by 5 quality components:
• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design; how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish
proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the
errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

4. Usability

5. Why usability is important?
◦ Usability is necessary for survival in this global competitive market if our product is not satisfying the user need then user will
move to those places where their needs is fulfilled and have good user experience. As we are clear from above definition that
usability is the measure that how much our product is usable to the wide range of user. The wide support of user meeting their
requirement is important for our product to succeed in this global market.
◦ Lets take one general example in Indian market private telecom are doing well as compared to government ones as they are
more concerned with user satisfaction while government officer only wants to do the job. This shows us why usability(User
Satisfaction Quality) is important.

6. How to improve Usability?
◦ There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and useful is user testing, which has 3 components:
• Get hold of some representative users, such as customers for an ecommerce site or employees for an intranet (in the latter case, they should
work outside your department).
• Ask the users to perform representative tasks with the design.
• Observe what the users do, where they succeed, and where they have difficulties with the user interface. Shut up and let the users do the
talking.

7. What s Universal Usability?
◦ The design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need
for adaptation or specialized design.
◦ Ben Shneiderman, a pioneer in the field of human-computer interaction, defines universal usability as “enabling all
citizens to succeed using communication and information technology in their tasks.” Notice he does not say, “enabling
all citizens to use”, but rather, “enabling all citizens to succeed”—quite a call to arms! Designers who practice universal
usability strive for designs that gracefully accommodate a diversity of user needs and circumstances.

8. Universal Usability

9. 7 Principles of Universal Design -
◦ Principle 1: Equitable Use
◦ The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
◦ Principle 2: Flexibility in Use
◦ The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
◦ Principle 3: Simple and Intuitive Use
◦ Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
◦ Principle 4: Perceptible Information
◦ The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.

10. ◦ Principle 5: Tolerance for Error
◦ The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
◦ Principle 6: Low Physical Effort
◦ The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.
◦ Principle 7: Size and Space for Approach and Use
◦ Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user’s body size, posture, or mobility.

11. Some Stats showing internet penetration and growth
in India and World

12. Frequency of
Internet Usage in
India

13. What is the need of Universal Usability?
◦ As we have seen some stats based on that we can say:-
◦ As we all know due to Digital India movement and Internet penetration around the globe the need of universal
usability plays a vital role in providing equal opportunities to vast verity of people like people with different type
disabilities should also able to access the public portals like government websites, Universities websites etc.
◦ We also see that the user of Internet are from different age groups which shows us that if a 17 year old boy is using
something then it should also be friendly to 70 year old man to max out the reach of our website or product.
◦ We have also seen that the user may be from rural or urban area and it should be friendly to both type of users.

14. How to implement Universal usability?
◦ Moving beyond the “typical” user
◦ The first step toward the goal of universal usability is to discard the notion that we are designing for a “typical” user. Universal usability
accounts for users of all ages, experience levels, and physical or sensory limitations. Users also vary widely in their technical circumstances: in
screen size, network speed, browser versions, and specialized software such as screen readers for the visually impaired. Each of us inhabits
multiple points on the spectrum, points that are constantly shifting as our needs and contexts change. For example, virtually all adults over
fifty have some form of mild to moderate visual impairment. And within that context our needs change as we move from viewing web pages
from the back of an auditorium to sitting in front of a large desktop display monitor to walking down the street peering at a small mobile
display. A broad user definition that includes the full range of user needs and contexts is the first step in producing universally usable designs.
◦ Supporting adaptation
◦ Next we need a design approach that will accommodate the diversity of our user base, and here we turn to the principle of adaptation. On the
web, universal usability is achieved through adaptive design, where documents transform to accommodate different user needs and contexts.
Adaptive design is the means by which we support a wide range of technologies and diverse users. The following guidelines support
adaptation.

15. ◦ Flexibility
◦ Universal usability is difficult to achieve in a physical environment, where certain parameters are necessarily “locked in.” It would be difficult to
make a book, and a chair to read it in, that fit the needs and preferences of every reader. The digital environment is another story. Digital
documents can adapt to different access devices and user needs based on the requirements of the context.

16. ◦ User control
◦ In many design fields, designers make choices that give shape to a thing, and these choices, particularly in a fixed environment, are bound to
exclude some users. No one text size will be readable by all readers, but the book designer must decide about what size to set text, and that
decision is likely to produce text that is too small for some readers. In the web environment, users have control over their environment. Users
can manipulate browser settings to display text at a size that they find comfortable for reading.

17. ◦ Keyboard functionality
◦ Universal usability is not just about access to information. Another crucial component is interaction, in which users navigate and interact with
links, forms, and other elements of the web interface. For universal usability, these actionable elements must be workable from the keyboard.
Many users cannot use a mouse, and many devices do not support point-and-click interaction. For example, nonvisual users cannot see the
screen, and many mobile devices only support keyboard navigation. Some users use software or other input devices that only work by
activating keyboard commands. For these users, elements that can only be activated using a mouse are inaccessible.

18. ◦ Text equivalents
◦ Text is universally accessible. (Whether text is universally comprehensible is another discussion!) Unlike images and media, text is readable by
software and can be rendered in different formats and acted upon by software. When information is presented in a format other than text,
such as visually using images or video or audibly using spoken audio, the information is potentially lost on users who cannot see or hear. Web
technology anticipates format-related access issues and supplies methods for providing equivalent text. With equivalent text, the information
contained in the media is also available as text, such as a text transcript or captions along with spoken audio

19. References
◦ https://webstyleguide.com/
◦ http://universalusability.com/
◦ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/