Abstract
Administrative processes are ubiquitous in modern life and have been identified as a particular burden to those with accessibility needs. Students who have accessibility needs often have to understand guidance, fill in complex forms, and communicate with multiple parties to disclose disabilities and access appropriate support. Conversational user interfaces (CUIs) could allow us to reimagine such processes, yet there is currently limited understanding of how to design these to be accessible, or whether such an approach would be preferred. In the ADMINS (Assistants for the Disclosure and Management of Information about Needs and Support) project, we implemented a virtual assistant (VA) which is designed to enable students to disclose disabilities and to provide guidance and suggestions about appropriate support. ADMINS explores the potential of CUIs to reduce administrative burden and improve the experience of arranging support by replacing a static form with written or spoken dialogue. This article reports the results of two trials conducted during the project. A beta trial using an early version of the VA provided understanding of accessibility challenges and issues in user experience. The beta trial sample included 22 students who had already disclosed disabilities and 3 disability support advisors. After improvements to the design, a larger main trial was conducted with 134 students who disclosed their disabilities to the university using both the VA and the existing form-based process. The results show that the VA was preferred by most participants to completing the form (64.9% vs 23.9%). Qualitative and quantitative feedback from the trials also identified accessibility and user experience barriers for improving CUI design, and an understanding of benefits and preferences that can inform further development of accessible CUIs for this design space.
- [1] . 2021. Perceptions and opinions of patients about mental health chatbots: Scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 23, 1 (2021), e17828.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [2] . 2018. Exploring requirements and opportunities of conversational user interfaces for the cognitively impaired. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct (2018), 119–126.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [3] . 2019. Visual Disabilities. In Web Accessibility; A Foundation for Research. Y. Yesilada and S. Harper (Eds.). Springer, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
- [4] . 2018. Chatbots: Changing user needs and motivations. Interactions 25, 5 (2018). 38–43.
DOI: Google ScholarDigital Library - [5] . 2022. If Alexa knew the state I was in, it would cry: Older adults’ perspectives of voice assistants for health. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [6] . 2014. Thematic analysis. In Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY, 1947–1952.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [7] . 1995. What is participatory research? Social Science & Medicine 41, 12 (1995), 1667–1676.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [8] . 2018. The accessibility of administrative processes: Assessing the impacts on students in higher education. In Proceedings of the Internet of Accessible Things. 1–10.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [9] 2022. Going back is not a choice: Accessibility lessons for higher education. https://disabledstudents.co.uk/not-a-choice/.Google Scholar
- [10] . 2015. Experiences of personal independence payment (PIP) for people with sensory loss. Research Findings, 48.Google Scholar
- [11] . 2014. Take-up of Benefits and Poverty: An Evidence and Policy Review. CESI, London.Google Scholar
- [12] . 2019. “Forgot your password again?” acceptance and user experience of a chatbot for in-company IT support. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia. 1–11.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [13] 2020. Arriving at thriving: Learning from disabled students to ensure access for all. https://www.policyconnect.org.uk/research/arriving-thriving-learning-disabled-students-ensure-access-all.Google Scholar
- [14] . 2016. Wochat chatbot user experience summary. In Proc. WOCHAT.Google Scholar
- [15] . 2019. The effects of continuous conversation and task complexity on usability of an ai-based conversational agent in smart home environments. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Man-Machine-Environment System Engineering. Springer, Singapore, 695–703.Google Scholar
- [16] . 2017. Evaluating the accessibility of the job search and interview process for people who are blind and visually impaired. In Proceedings of the 14th Web for All Conference. ACM.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [17] . 2021. FAQ chatbot and inclusive learning in massive open online courses. Computers & Education, 104395.Google Scholar
- [18] . 2020. Designing an assistant for the disclosure and management of information about needs and support: The ADMINS project. In Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 1–4.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [19] . 2021. Implementing an accessible conversational user interface: Applying feedback from university students and disability support advisors. In Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All Conference. 1–5.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [20] . 2019. Bots gain importance in Gartner service technologies bullseye. Gartner. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/bots-gain-importance-in-gartner-service-technologies-bullseye.Google Scholar
- [21] . 1984. An iterative design methodology for user-friendly natural language office information applications. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 2, 1 (1984), 26–41.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [22] . 2000. Suede: A Wizard of Oz prototyping tool for speech user interfaces. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [23] . 2019. Understanding and measuring user experience in conversational interfaces. Interacting with Computers 31, 2 (2019), 192–207.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [24] . 2019. Deafness and hearing loss. In Web Accessibility: A Foundation for Research, Y. Yesilada and S. Harper (eds.). Springer, London, 35–47.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [25] . 2012. Still up in the air: Government regulation of airline websites and continuing price inequality for persons with disabilities online. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research. ACM, 240–245.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [26] . 2011. A Practical Guide to Delivering Personalisation: Person-Centred Practice in Health and Social Care. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.Google Scholar
- [27] . 2016. Standardized questionnaires for voice interaction design. Voice Interaction Design 1 (2016), 1.Google Scholar
- [28] . 2018. The system usability scale: Past, present, and future. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 34, 7 (2018), 577–590.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [29] . 2021. They often avoid text. Chatbot for Young Adults with Dyslexia. Scandinavian Workshop on E-Government. ITU Copenhagen.Google Scholar
- [30] . 2014. Usability of affective interfaces for a digital arts tutoring system. Behaviour & Information Technology 33, 2 (2014), 105–116.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [31] . 2020. Accessible conversational user interfaces: Considerations for design. In Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All Conference. 1–11.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [32] . 2021. Taylor, the disability disclosure virtual assistant: A case study of participatory research with disabled students. Education Sciences 11, 10 (2021), 587.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [33] . 2019. A study of user experience in knowledge-based QA chatbot design. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Human Systems Integration. Springer, Cham, 589–593.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [34] . 2016. “Like having a really bad PA” The gulf between user expectation and experience of conversational agents. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 5286–5297.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [35] . 2015. Technology acceptance model: A literature review from 1986 to 2013. Universal Access in the Information Society 14, 1 (2015), 81–95.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [36] . 2014. Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. CAST Professional Publishing.Google Scholar
- [37] . 2018. Gartner says 25 percent of customer service operations will use virtual customer assistants by 2020. Article on Gartner.Com. Available online at https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-19-gartner-says-25-percent-of-customer-service-operations-will-use-virtual-customer-assistants-by-2020.Google Scholar
- [38] 2020. Arriving at thriving: Learning from disabled students to ensure access for all. Available at: https://www.policyconnect.org.uk/research/arriving-thriving-learning-disabled-students-ensure-access-all.Google Scholar
- [39] . 2018. Accessibility came by accident use of voice-controlled intelligent personal assistants by people with disabilities. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–13.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [40] . 2019. Experimental study of socio chatbot usability (Master's thesis).Google Scholar
- [41] . 2019. Cognitive services to improve user experience in searching for academic information based on Chatbot. In Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE XXVI International Conference on Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computing (INTERCON). IEEE, 1–4.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [42] . 2019. Speech and language’. In Web Accessibility; A Foundation for Research Y. Yesilada and S. Harper (Eds.).Google Scholar
- [43] . 2017. The usability analysis of chatbot technologies for internal personnel communications. In Proceedings of the IIE Annual Conference. Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), 1357–1362.Google Scholar
- [44] . 2018. Virtual assistants for mobile interaction: A review from the accessibility perspective. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction. 568–571.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [45] . 2018. Personality matters! improving the user experience of chatbot interfaces-personality provides a stable pattern to guide the design and behaviour of conversational agents (master's thesis, NTNU).Google Scholar
- [46] . 2022. Chatbot accessibility guidance: A review and way forward. In Proceedings of 6th International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Springer, Singapore, 919–942.Google Scholar
- [47] . 2019. Physical disabilities. In Web Accessibility: A Foundation for Research, Y. Yesilada and S. Harper (Eds.). 19–33.Google ScholarCross Ref
- [48] . 2019. VERSE: Bridging screen readers and voice assistants for enhanced eyes-free web search. In Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 414–426.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [49] . 2018. Available online at: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/.Google Scholar
- [50] . 2014. Hands free-care free: Elderly people taking advantage of speech-only interaction. In Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational. 203–206.Google ScholarDigital Library
- [51] . 2013. Virtual agents as daily assistants for elderly or cognitively impaired users. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 79–91.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Creating ‘a Simple Conversation’: Designing a Conversational User Interface to Improve the Experience of Accessing Support for Study
Recommendations
Implementing an accessible conversational user interface: applying feedback from university students and disability support advisors
W4A '21: Proceedings of the 18th International Web for All ConferenceIn the ADMINS (Assistants for the Disclosure and Management of Information about Needs and Support) project, we have implemented a virtual assistant which is designed to enable students to disclose disabilities and to provide guidance and suggestions ...
Accessible conversational user interfaces: considerations for design
W4A '20: Proceedings of the 17th International Web for All ConferenceConversational user interfaces (CUIs), such as chatbots and voice assistants, are increasingly common in areas of day-to-day life, and can be expected to become ever more pervasive in the future. These interfaces are being designed for ever more complex ...
Designing an Assistant for the Disclosure and Management of Information about Needs and Support: the ADMINS project
ASSETS '20: Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and AccessibilityIn this paper, we describe accessible design considerations for the Assistants for the Disclosure and Management of Information about Needs and Support project (ADMINS). In ADMINS, artificial intelligence (AI) services are being used to create a virtual ...
Comments