Tag Archives: accessibility

I’m pleased to announce that I have recently had a paper accepted to the upcoming CHI 2013 conference in Paris in May! This paper, entitled “Analyzing User-Generated YouTube Videos to Understand Touchscreen Use by People with Motor Impairments,” was written in collaboration with Leah Findlater, a professor of HCI at the University of Maryland (UMD), and Yoojin Kim, a Master’s student at UMD. We examined YouTube videos depicting people with physical impairments, including children, using touchscreen devices in order to understand the limitations and challenges these users are encountering.

Here’s the abstract:

Most work on the usability of touchscreen interaction for people with motor impairments has focused on lab studies with relatively few participants and small cross-sections of the population. To develop a richer characterization of use, we turned to a previously untapped source of data: YouTube videos. We collected and analyzed 187 non-commercial videos uploaded to YouTube that depicted a person with a physical disability interacting with a mainstream mobile touchscreen device. We coded the videos along a range of dimensions to characterize the interaction, the challenges encountered, and the adaptations being adopted in daily use. To complement the video data, we also invited the video uploaders to complete a survey on their ongoing use of touchscreen technology. Our findings show that, while many people with motor impairments find these devices empowering, accessibility issues still exist. In addition to providing implications for more accessible touchscreen design, we reflect on the application of user-generated content to study user interface design.

Here is the camera-ready version of this paper. See you in Paris!

***Note: we have learned that this paper will receive a CHI ‘Best Paper Award’! This award is an honor only the top 1% of submissions receive, and we are very honored our work was selected to be among such great company.