[games_access] Accessibility Terminology

[John R. Porter]

Right. Like Ian said, 'accessibility' is definitely a term that explicitly
implies impairment of some sort. 'Usability' is the more general term you
hear used.

As for user testing being exclusively carried out with disabled
individuals, yeah, I've heard of it. It's often called "extreme user
testing," as per the corresponding method in the IDEO toolkit. I'm in the
user-centered design field, and while conducting user tests with the
disabled is definitely something I advocate, I would be *very* hesitant to
do it exclusively. You can get interesting data, to be sure, but it's data
about a niche user population nonetheless.

-John

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Thomas Westin <thomasw at dsv.su.se> wrote:

> Yes that it was I tell my students too; they usually get more interesting
> data that way
>
> And yes, accessibility is a legal term regarding disability, but the use
> of accessibility solutions may benefit more users, which I wanted to find
> out with my study.
>
> On a sidenote, accessibility is a problematic term since it may mean
> different things in different contexts, e.g. access to information in
> security research, is balanced to personal integrity etc and has little to
> do with the understanding of or interaction with information, as with
> accessibility for disabled. So when I talk to people outside of the
> disability context, I usually try to add "for disabled", i.e. accessibility
> for disabled, even this means I act against knowing better about the
> potential use of the solutions.
>
> Mvh / Best regards
> Thomas Westin
> Stockholm University :: dsv.su.se :: +46 73-707 86 86
>
> On 19Mar 2012, at 3:31 PM, Ian Hamilton wrote:
>
> I once worked with a consultant who advocated user testing being carried
> out solely with people with disabilities, rather than a representative
> proportion.. a bit controversial, but makes perfect sense.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> games_access mailing list
> games_access at igda.org
> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> The main SIG website page is http://igda-gasig.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist7.pair.net/pipermail/games_access/attachments/20120319/9d5c49c6/attachment.htm>