UniversalUsability.org

Accommodating users with different skills, knowledge, age, gender, disabilities, disabling conditions (mobility, sunlight, noise), literacy, culture, income, etc.

A second challenge to broadening participation is the diversity of users (Kobsa and Stephanidis, 1998). Since skill levels with computing vary greatly, search engines provide a basic and advanced dialog box for query formulation. Since knowledge levels in an application domain vary greatly, some sites provide two or more versions. For example, the National Cancer Institute provides introductory cancer information for patients and details for physicians. Since children differ from adults in their needs, NASA provides a children"s section on their space mission pages. Universities often segment their sites for applicants, current students, or alumni, but then provide links to shared resources of mutual interest. Segmentation creation and management tools would help developers wishing to pursue this strategy.

Similar segmenting strategies can be employed to accommodate users with poor reading skills or users who require other natural languages. While there are some services to automatically convert web pages to multiple languages the quality of human translations is much higher. Research on tools to facilitate preparation and updating of web sites in multiple languages would be helpful. For example, if an e-commerce site maintained multiple language versions of a product catalog, then it would be useful to have a tool that facilitated simultaneous changes to a product price (possibly in different currencies), name (possibly in different character sets), or description (possibly tuned to regional variations). A more difficult problem comes in trying to accommodate users with a wide range of incomes, cultures, or religions. Imagine trying to prepare multiple music, food, or clothing catalogs that were tuned to local needs by emphasizing highly desired products and eliminating offensive items. E-commerce sites that are successful in these strategies are likely to be more widely used.

Another set of issues deals with the wide range of disabilities, or differential capabilities of users. Many systems allow partially sighted users, especially elderly users, to increase the font size or contrast in documents, but they rarely allow users to improve readability in control panels, help messages, or dialog boxes. Blind users will be more active users of information and communications services if they can receive documents by speech generation or in Braille, and provide input by voice or their customized interfaces. Physically disabled users will eagerly use services if they can connect their customized interfaces to standard graphical user interfaces, even though they may work at a much slower pace. Cognitively impaired users with mild learning disabilities, dyslexia, poor memory, and other special needs could also be accommodated with modest changes to improve layouts, control vocabulary, and limit short-term memory demands.

Expert and frequent users also have special needs. Enabling customization that speeds high-volume users, macros to support repeated operations, and inclusion of special-purpose devices could benefit many. Research on high-end users could improve interfaces for all users.

Finally, appropriate services for a broader range of users need to be developed, tested, and refined. Corporate knowledge workers are the primary audience for many contemporary software projects, so the interface and information needs of unemployed, homemakers, disabled, or migrant workers, usually get less attention. This has been an appropriate business decision till now, but as the market broadens and key societal services are provided electronically, the forgotten users must be accommodated. For example, Microsoft Word provides templates for marketing plans and corporate reports, but every citizen interfaces might help with job applications, babysitting cooperatives, or letters to city hall. And what about first aid, 911, crime reporting, or poison control on the web?

The growth of online support communities, medical first-aid guides, neighborhood-improvement councils, and parent-teacher associations will be accelerated as improved interface and information designs are developed. Community-oriented plans for preventing drug or alcohol abuse, domestic violence, or crime could also benefit from research on interface and information design. Such research is especially important for government web sites, since their designers are moving towards providing basic services such as driver registration, business licenses, municipal services, tax filing, and eventually voting. Respect for the differing needs of users will do much to attract them to using advanced technologies.