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The Challenges in Adopting Assistive Technologies in the Workplace for People with Visual Impairments

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The Challenges in Adopting Assistive Technologies in the Workplace for People with Visual Impairments The challenges in adopting assistive technologies in the workplace for people with visual impairments Author Wahidin, H, Waycott, J, Baker, S Published 2018 Conference Title OzCHI '18: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction Version Accepted Manuscript (AM) DOI https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292175 Copyright Statement © ACM, 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in OzCHI '18: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, ISBN: 978-1-4503-6188-0, https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292175 Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/402099 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au The Challenges in Adopting Assistive Technologies in the Workplace for People with Visual Impairments Herman Wahidin Jenny Waycot Steven Baker Interaction Design Lab, School of Interaction Design Lab, School of Interaction Design Lab, School of Computing & Information Systems Computing & Information Systems Computing & Information Systems Te University of Melbourne Te University of Melbourne Te University of Melbourne Melbourne, VIC, Australia Melbourne, VIC, Australia Melbourne, VIC, Australia [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Computer-Human Interaction Conference (OzCHI '18). ACM Press, New York, NY, 11 pages. htps://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292175 Tere are many barriers to employment for people with visual impairments. Assistive technologies (ATs), such as computer screen readers and enlarging sofware, are commonly used to 1 Introduction help overcome employment barriers and enable people with In 2015, there were approximately 4.3 million Australians living visual impairments to contribute to, and participate in, the with a disability, according to data from Australian Bureau of workforce. However, recent research suggests it can be difficult Statistics [4]. This number is equivalent to 18.3% or nearly a fifth for people with visual impairments to effectively adopt and of the Australian population. A disability can create barriers for implement ATs in the workplace. Tis paper reports insights people to access health care, social services, education, and to from interviews with five professional workers with visual participate in employment [48]. Anyone who has experienced impairments. Te interviews revealed that each participant had unemployment will understand that it can have a significant adopted different configurations of ATs, which they used in negative impact on psychological and social wellbeing. various ways to support their work. In addition, all participants According to a large-scale study by Milner and colleagues, these followed a complex process to successfully select, learn, and negative effects can be particularly strong for those living with a integrate these tools into their work activities. During this disability [28]. However, some of the barriers to unemployment process, they faced challenges, such as the need to educate for persons with a disability can be overcome with the use of colleagues to make shared documents more accessible. We assistive technologies (ATs) [9,18,38], such as mobility aids, conclude that despite progress in the development and use of screen magnifiers, and screen readers for people with visual ATs, there remains a need for future work that addresses these impairments [19]. accessibility issues to support collaborative work between people According to the Employment Research Survey in 2012 [40], with visual impairments and their sighted colleagues. people with visual impairments are four times as likely to be unemployed compared to the general population. Therefore, ATs CCS CONCEPTS are needed to enhance the participation of people with visual • Human-centered computing → Accessibility technologies impairments in the workforce. The utilisation of ATs for people • Social and professional topics → Assistive technologies with visual impairments is particularly important given that sight is crucial for many work activities, such as access to print KEYWORDS materials and computer systems [30]. Indeed, a survey of over Visual impairment, workplace, assistive technology 600 visually impaired people by Vision Australia found that 94% of people with visual impairments use ATs in their jobs [40]. ACM Reference format: There are numerous ATs available to support the use of Herman Wahidin, Jenny Waycot, and Steven Baker. 2018. Te computers and software in office-based employment [19]. Challenges in Adopting Assistive Technologies in the Workplace for However, recent research shows barriers still exist that make People with Visual Impairments. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian some tools, such as screen readers, difficult to use across contexts [5]. For instance, there are social barriers to their Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal effective use in collaborative settings [6], screen readers also or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or have difficulty accessing websites [26] and describing image-rich distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work content on social media sites [29]. Billah et al. [5] argue that we owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is still have a long way to go before people with visual permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute impairments have ubiquitous access to digital technologies. to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. In response to this concern, we conducted an in-depth OzCHI '18, December 4–7, 2018, Melbourne, VIC, Australia interview study that aimed to understand how people with © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6188-0/18/12…$15.00 visual impairments use ATs to support their work. The study https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292175 aimed to better understand the factors that will need to be The types of AT that can be used in the workplace by people addressed in order to improve collaborative work in the future. with visual impairments are explained by Hersh and Johnson Building on a growing body of research in this area [5,6], we [19]. They describe the AT types in detail by following these examined how people with visual impairments go about employment categories: professional and person-centred, integrating ATs into their work practices. To frame our scientific and technical, administrative and secretarial, skilled research, we adapted key elements of Kintsch and dePaula’s and unskilled (manual) trades, and outdoor work. This widely referenced AT adoption framework [24]. Specifically, we information asserts that ATs can improve the work participation investigated the following research questions: (1) What are the of people with visual impairments in a wide range of types and the functionalities of ATs being used? (2) What are the professions. experiences, including the difficulties, in adopting ATs in the workplace? We found that our participants used unique 2.1 AT Challenges configurations of ATs to support their particular needs and faced Prior studies have identified some challenges regarding the use a number of challenges during the adoption process. Participants of ATs by people with visual impairments. Billah et al. [5] described ongoing accessibility challenges, often due to the highlight several problems in using different screen readers limitations of screen readers in accessing graphs, images, certain across platforms: (1) Lack of shortcuts standardisation; (2) Lack layouts, styles, and formats within office documents. They also of portable settings that work on different operating systems; spoke of the challenges associated with educating their and (3) Remote access systems that are poorly supported. These colleagues about collaborative work practices that relate to those findings revealed that screen readers need major improvements accessibility issues. before they can provide ubiquitous access to people with visual Below, we discuss previous research in this area before impairments. describing our study methods and findings in more detail. We For many modern work activities, websites provide access to conclude that accessibility in the workplace remains an ongoing essential information and tasks. However, many developers do challenge for people with visual impairments. Technology not follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and developers, employers, and employees need to respond to this this has an effect on how ATs work. An analysis of Australian challenge. As well as increasing awareness of accessibility issues government agency websites conducted as part of the National among sighted colleagues, we argue that there is a need for Transition Strategy (NTS) reported that at the end of 2014, only further work to address the accessibility problems and improve 39% of new websites conformed to WCAG 2.0 [20]. The large collaborative practices in the workplace. number of inaccessible websites created frustration among people with visual impairments [26]. Moreover, social media, such as Twitter also pose problems to screen readers because of 2 Related Work embedded images; these are becoming increasingly common Different types of
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