New CS Activity Focuses on Accessibility in HCI
“I’ve used Wikipedia for at least 10 years, and today was the first time I considered how a user with visual impairment would navigate the website.”
This post is part of a series following the progress of Ethics Lab’s collaboration with the Computer Science Department that began with the Mozilla-sponsored ResponsibleCS challenge.
With the transition to online learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, students have been forced to rely on Zoom for class. Like any online platform, the features of its design inevitably affect the user experience, leaving some groups more marginalized than others. Based on this knowledge, Dr. Ray Essick and Ethics Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Alicia Patterson conducted the third ResponsibleCS session of the semester in Essick’s Advanced Programming class to help students examine human-computer interactions and the challenges and benefits of design as it relates to different groups’ user experience.
Before the class, students conducted research on one of six websites or platforms (YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Wikipedia, and Amazon) and the ways in which their designs impact four user groups (neurodivergent, hearing impaired, multilingual, and visually impaired). Patterson hoped that students would analyze some of the less obvious hindrances users might experience as a result of the sites’ designs.
Students practiced identifying accessibility issues based on their research, while also acknowledging how their own experiences might affect their ability to perceive them.
For example, a group of students analyzing Reddit’s interface noted the plethora of visual distractions (which might negatively impact neurodivergent users), the lack of translations (which might impede multilingual users’ ability to interact), and the large amount of uncaptioned content (which would entirely prevent visually impaired users from accessing it).
“This exercise was partly borne out of a homework from an engagement from last year, where students were saying that anyone could use a site as long as they were tech-savvy,” Patterson explained. “When we look at whether something is accessible, we need to be aware that we might not even know some challenges that are not present to us because we are relying on cues that come from privilege.”
Consonant with the first two ResponsibleCS activities, this one emphasized the hidden assumptions designers might make while setting up these systems, often without realizing the potential ethical ramifications.
“We have set up these systems without really thinking about some of the ethical, social parts of them. All that we are examining is at the invisible level, and we have to work to bring that out,” Patterson said. She hoped that students left the exercise with an enhanced understanding of the difference between accessibility and justice in design as well as a more critical perspective on how to achieve these ideals.