- What is it: Provides a deeper knowledge of potential people who are involved in research, development and use of AT solutions.
- Who can use it: AT and mainstream Developers, service providers, suppliers, manufacturers, researchers and anyone else who is interested in researching, developing and using AT solutions can use this kit and contribute to its content.
- Why it's helpful: The use model is developed based on an extensive user research. Thus, it will help development teams to have a wide range of people who may use their products in mind, and do not overlook their needs, challenges, desires and aspirations.
Overview
The Use Model identifies the main stakeholders who may be using various AT services and products in the developerSpace. These stakeholders will provide a concrete representation of end users for developers and evaluators in various development teams to help them better understand the scope, uses and success criteria of their work. In addition, having these stakeholders in mind will help development teams anticipate the gaps in the system early in the process and come up with different approaches to address them. The initial use model was developed based on the desktop research and feedback from P4A project partners. This initial model went through rounds of iterations and was refined as more in-depth knowledge of real users was acquired from surveys and interviews. It should be noted that the use model can be further iterated and refined as developers begin utilizing it in their work procedures.
The use model consists of the following components:
- Representative user personae
- Personae description
- User states and context maps
- Baseline use cases
- Narrative
- Stakeholder maps
- User Journey
Representative User Personae
The main goal of creating these personae is to assure each persona represents a group of stakeholders rather than an individual user. Similar to real users, these personae have diverse capabilities, needs and skillsets. It is very important to note that the focus is not on a medical explanation of what a person cannot accomplish or do, nor a lack of their ‘ability’; rather, there is an emphasis on the mismatch between the user’s needs and the context. The personae are built to illustrate each person from different angles and envision how they can take distinct roles within a system/ organization and interact with one another. Similar to real people, these personae should evolve over time as the a development project moves forward and developers, researchers gain a better understanding of their users and communicate that insight among teams. The personae are intended to be used as a design and development tool. They enable designers, developers and evaluators across the project to always have a diverse collection of stakeholders in mind to safeguard against leaving any user behind. Although different teams can focus more on a particular persona as their primary stakeholder, they should try integrating other personae to realize how other users can benefit from their work. Furthermore, when integrating multiple personae, development teams will be able to create more connected systems and also identify the missing links between different components across the various teams or parts of a project. To demonstrate the breadth of larger stakeholder groups that are represented by a particular user persona, the user states and context map tool has been applied. This map also shows each user in a state and context that can then be compared with them in another state or context and can also be compared to other users to reveal patterns or commonalities in needs that might not otherwise be obvious. For each user persona, several maps have been overlaid to visually show the unique needs and preferences individuals have and how they can be understood.
The following chart shows how the representative persona are linked to the studied user groups:
AT Developer
James Olsen: I want to do something meaningful with the skills I have.
- 38 years old
- Freelance developer/ entrepreneur
- Always ready to take on new challenges
- Runs for marathons to raise money for various charity causes.
James is an independent developer working for the last 15 years in the area of accessibility. He started as a software developer for a large company, and then he decided that what he really wanted was to be able to make his own decisions and choose the projects he would love to work on to make a difference in the community. He strongly believes that giving back to society is the responsibility of each one of us. He also believes that making a successful product requires not only technical knowledge but also insight into economics and entrepreneurship. He believes that people should not just follow mainstream trends; they should look deeper into where the real needs are for individuals with various accessibility issues and challenges. James is confident and very self-driven, and is motivated by change and innovation and is not afraid to take the next steps. He continuously searches for new ideas and is a member of large online developer communities. He enjoys the flexibility of working for himself. He is experienced in the field and advocates that strong coding and development experience does not suffice for making an accessible product. James believes that before starting the design and implementation, it is important to know the need for the product and the related cost and efforts.
Service Provider
Mary Walsh: I enjoy helping people to get back to those activities that make their life more meaningful.”
- 42 years old
- Occupational therapist at a public hospital
- Lives with her daughter
- Very active. Meditates regularly and plays tennis with her girlfriends on the weekends
Mary has been practicing occupational therapy for the past 12 years and specializes in mental health and brain injuries. She is a member of the Association of Occupational Therapists in her country. She has been very active in her professional community, trying to attend the annual OT congress. Once in a while she volunteers her time to hold workshops at the hospital to train stroke patient’s family members for in-home support. She is always looking for different ways to improve her patients’ experience at the hospital. However, her time and resources are limited and sometimes she is unable to spend as much time as she would like to with a patient, or sometimes the client’s insurance does not cover the extra time and services she has to offer. Mary gets frustrated when she notices that some of the problems that her clients are experiencing could be easily prevented if their work/life setting was better designed or put together. All these little things here and there cause her to question how she could be more effective in her field. She enjoys system thinking and would like to be able to work with people in other fields to design and build better living and working environments especially for stroke survivors and their support groups. At the same time, she would like to take her practice to another level and provide her clients with more meaningful solutions that are not just short-term fixes.
AT Researcher/Educator
Nora Lindberg: We should get out of our comfort zone and approach other fields.
- 54 years old
- Access technologies researcher at the department of Computer and Information Science
- A lifelong learner
- Enjoys working with students on variety of projects
Nora works with several master’s and PhD students at the Access Technologies Research Lab in a public University. She is either helping them with their projects or employing them to work with her on commissioned projects. Working on a diverse range of solutions has broaden her perspective about assistive technology and its potential. The other advantage of working in the lab is that she doesn’t have to be an expert in technology since there are always experts and eager students around who can bring a research proposal to fruition. Managing time, funding and personnel for each project is a major challenge. Nora and her team always juggle different projects to make sure they have enough resources to meet their deadlines. Sometimes they have to drop projects as funding terminates or repackage a solution under different grants to continue their research and development process. Although Nora is very excited about what they accomplish at the lab, she is not satisfied with how these solutions are disseminated. People who are not aware of their website/social media or don’t attend the conference that her team goes to might never find out about their projects. She strongly advocates for coming out of the niche accessibility sector and being actively present in all the other scientific events, conferences, exhibitions, journals, etc. However, she admits that breaking out of the accessibility community and making the connections to other organizations requires extra time and resources that she doesn’t always have available.
AT Vendor
Karl Hoffmann: To be sustainable, we have to find out which other markets we can serve.
- 49 years old
- Marketing and sales director at Learning Tools
- Enjoys interacting with clients and seeing how their products help them progress
- Fervent biker
- Keen of new technologies
Karl and two of his good friends started the “Learning Tools” company a few years ago. Since Karl had a background in business and public relations, he focused on marketing and selling their products while the other two focused on developing learning applications for individuals with special cognitive needs. Karl’s responsibilities go way beyond his title. He is the go-to-person with regards to the latest news about assistive technology. He checks different tech blogs, journals, social media and specific forums every day. His findings often turn into interesting topics discussed at coffee breaks or sometimes become an initial spark for a future project. During the development process, Karl is responsible for recruiting end users to test their products in exchange for free access to some of their applications. After the product is out, he keeps track of user’s feedback, reviews and ratings to make sure all the issues raised, or concerns are communicated with the development team. Their user group is not very large, and amongst this limited group, people have very different needs, and also their assistive equipment are very dispersed; some use mobile devices with different operating systems (iOS, Android, Microsoft) and others use web technologies. Developing a product that can function effectively across different platforms is a very difficult and expensive task. On the other hand, to stay competitive in the online application market, they have to sell their apps for very low prices that could hardly cover any of their expenses. Despite all these difficulties, Karl and his team are so passionate about what they do and how their products make life of some people better even if it’s just for a few.
End User (no current barrier)
Elena Rossi: I want to acquire skills and knowledge that will make me competitive and confident.
- 21 years old
- Unemployed
- Holds a college diploma in Information Science
- Active blogger. Created an online blog about young individuals diagnosed with MS
Elena has just finished a two-year college course in her hometown. A few years ago, when she was finishing high school, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). She was active in sports and was hoping to get a scholarship, but after her diagnosis, practicing was not feasible. During her last semester of high school, she felt emotionally paralyzed and helpless. After her school counsellor recommended joining a MS support group, she started to reorganise her life and accept her new health condition. She decided to earn a college degree that helped her acquire basic knowledge in information systems and computers. After she finished her degree, she did not want to find a regular job; she wanted to learn how to help people like herself remain active in life despite their medical conditions. She has come to terms with the fact that her MS will progress, and this has inspired her to learn how to make everyday products more accessible in order to better prepare herself and her parents for the future to come. She has been searching the internet for a while now, trying to find resources, online training courses, accessibility training videos and any related materials. In her search, she has realized how rare the information sources are in her language and how difficult it is to assure the information is not contradictory. As a result, she has started a blog about young individuals who are diagnosed with MS and are looking for AT resources, trainings and tools and guides.
End User (1 to 3 barriers)
Olga Literski: I wish I could spend my time and energy on things I like instead of dealing with all these little problems here and there.
- 32 years old
- Accountant
- Temporarily moved to a foreign country for work
- Comfortable using computer and mobile technologies
- Foodie. Loves to try new recipes
Olga works for an Accounting firm. She has been very diligent about her work and has been promoted several times over the past few years. A few months ago, her firm got a new client in a foreign country and offered Olga an opportunity to join that project. Olga was hesitant at first to move to a new country with a different language, but her mom and friends assured her that her blindness shouldn’t stop her from taking that chance. She contacted Blind and Partially Sighted Association before she moved and was connected to a volunteer who helped her rent a furnished apartment close to her new office. Her mom also helped her during the move and stayed with her for the first week to add braille labels to different items around the house. Living in a new city with a different language has been challenging. For instance, store layouts are unfamiliar, and products have different packaging. So, a simple grocery-shopping may take a few hours. At her apartment, the state of the art appliances frustrates Olga the most. Although her mom has added some labels for the touch screen controls, she still has to spend a long time to get to the right setting. Since they don’t read back her final selection, sometimes she chooses a wrong combination. For example, once she accidentally touched hot water on the washing machine and her favorite wool sweater shrank. And when she accesses local shops and organizations websites, she experiences difficulty with her screen reader that doesn’t recognize several words in this language.
End User (more than 4 barriers)
Nicholas Gallo: I want to do things that other kids my age do.
- 11 years old
- Home Schooled
- Lives in suburb with his parents and younger brother, Michael
- Loves to participate in family gatherings and outings
Nicholas was born in a small town and lived there until he was two. As he grew older, his parents noticed that his motor skills were not developing as other children in his age. That was the time that Nicholas was introduced to the city's general hospital. As his parents were busy collecting test results, Nicholas enjoyed watching the crowd and all those actions around the hospital. When he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, his parents decided to move to the city to be closer to the medical facilities and experts. Nicholas has always had a very positive attitude towards his condition. He never gives up and gets disappointed of failure. He keeps trying different tasks, and he has already surpassed his therapist’s’ expectations. When his younger brother, Michael, was born, Nicholas became even more motivated to do things the way his younger brother did. He started learning everything all over again as his brother grew. They learned to crawl, stand, and walk together. And now after a few years, they love playing with one another even though Nicholas may have to use some assistive devices to be able to catch up with Michael. His extended family members are all soccer fans and follow the national league fervently. Their dad takes the boys to the stadium whenever there is a homecoming. Nicholas also really likes those days that all their relatives gather in their house to watch a soccer game on TV. As Michael's getting older, he tends to spend more time on his computer playing video games. Nicholas wants to participate in those games as much as other physical games they used to do together.
Care Giver
Vasili Moroz: Although I need as much help, I’m the main caregiver for my wife.
- 78 years old
- Retired Math teacher
- Lives with his wife
- His daughter helps him to video chat with their grandkids who are studying overseas
- Enjoys playing chess with his friends in a nearby park
Vasili was retired 10 years ago after teaching high school math for almost 40 years. Except one of his daughters, all his other children and grandkids live abroad. After the retirement, he spends most of his days at home, trying to keep busy with little projects around the house. Sometimes he visits his daughter who helps him video chat with his other kids and grandkids. Last year his wife had a stroke, which paralyzed the right side of her body and took her speech away. The first few months after the stroke were devastating for Vasili. He had to get used a whole new lifestyle. He wasn’t able to have a meaningful and mutual communication with her and had to start doing things that he hasn't done for decades, such as cooking, doing the laundry and some other house chores. Their daughter tries to help as much as possible and visits them a few times per week, however, with a full-time job there is so much she can do. His retirement pension is limited, so they can’t afford a full-time nurse to help them in the house. The most they could do was to sign up for a monthly cleaning service. Besides the house chores and taking care of his wife’s daily needs, Vasili tries to keep her physically and mentally active. He helps her exercise her right-side limbs and spends a good part of each day reading for her. Sometimes he is too busy taking care of his wife that he forgets to take his medications. This has put so much emotional and physical burden on Vasili’s shoulders and weakened him significantly over the past year.
User Organization
Pauline Rey: We should bring technology closer to people and make it available for all budgets.
- 62 years old
- Consultant at the Child Growth Foundation
- Loves spending time with her grandkids and playing with her dog
- Passionate about human rights
- Perefers using her old desktop computer.
Pauline used to work as a consultant in a public elementary school. Her experience with young kids with special needs, their parents and teachers made her aware of the scarcity and high cost of available assistive solutions. As a result, she started volunteering her time in advocacy organizations and gradually transitioned to Child Growth Foundation as a full-time consultant. With the rapid growth of mobile technology, Pauline has noticed many new assistive solutions emerging for kids with special needs, however, they are not available and accessible for all families. Pauline and her team have tried to create a database of many assistive solutions that are either available for free or funded by public or private insurances. However, with a small number of people, mostly volunteers, and with no background in technology, it’s practically impossible to keep track of each new version or each new solution that pops up in the market. They have put together a limited collection of software, applications and devices in their center, so, families and kids can interact with different options to find out which solution works best for them. Although this service has been very popular, Pauline has had a hard time raising enough funds to keep these solutions up to date and keep up to date with new devices and software. She believes the real big change comes when societies break the prejudice about disability. So, Pauline and her team try to educate the community to not treat these kids with a patronizing manner and instead provide them with the right tools to be as competent as any other individual.
Obligated Main Stream Organization
Felipe Castilo Porras: I just want to make sure our website is accessible, I don’t need to know how screen readers work.
- 56 years old
- Student Resource Centre administrator at a National university
- Lives with his wife and daughters
- Passionate about politics and international news
- Tries to avoid new technology
Felipe has been working with the Student Resources Center for the past 20 years and has seen many changes in that office. In the beginning, the resources were limited to textbooks, audio books, and video/audio cassettes. Nowadays, students have access to many different types of resources; most course materials are available on the school’s web portal, and some courses are taught online. Due to the mandate by the ministry of education, the school is required to make their website and online portal accessible otherwise their institution will be at the risk of prosecution. In the first step, they are planning to make the school’s web portal compatible with NVDA screen reader before the upcoming academic year. This is a new problem space for Felipe and has kept him thinking. He is also pressured by some of the professors who have already prepared all their course material in PDF format who are not willing to spend any time converting them to a screen reader compatible format. He has reached out to their computer science department to consult with professors and possibly recruit volunteers or interns who could help with this project. Felipe is a very proud man and he doesn’t want to share his desperation with his team. He also wants to please the new Dean with his leadership capabilities and impress him with the way he has managed this project on time and on budget.
Baseline Use Cases
The following is a shortlist of DeveloperSpace Infrastructure objectives that are used to build the use cases and add new ones:
- Making it easy to access resources, information, standards, trainings, statistics to answer questions
- Making it easier, faster and cheaper to access code, utilities, components and systems to enable creation or improvement of AT.
- Making it easier, faster and cheaper to assemble different components to create new AT or include new features or functions in existing solutions, or enable developers to build their own service infrastructures
- Making it easier and cheaper to offer services.
- Making it easier and cheaper to quickly and directly connect a human/ machine/ crowdsourced service to a person who is in need of that service
- Making it easier and cheaper to set up a general or specific purpose web-based Assistance on Demand service environment
- Making it easier and cheaper for individuals/ organizations to transform documents to an accessible format
- Making it easier to add document transformation feature to one’s service
- Making it easier and cheaper for individuals/ organizations to make audiovisual media more accessible
- Making it easier and cheaper to offer a media augmentation service
- Making it easier and cheaper for individuals and organization to integrate identity and access management functionality in their web enabled products and services.
- Making it easier and cheaper for developers or other stakeholders to find any of the broad range of communities that may be helpful to them or that they would like to become part of.
- Enable searching and finding solutions that are listed in the world in any of the federated databases
- Enable developers and manufacturers to list their products and do market research
- Assisting developers/ manufacturers/ vendors to do market research, including competitive review
- Enabling consumers to search for solutions/ give feedback about existing solutions/ provide feedforward about their needs and challenges/ leave feedpeer for others with similar inquiries
- Assisting small vendors/ individuals who can’t sell their solutions easily otherwise, sell it (internationally) through UL
Making it easy to access resources, information and standards
- Main Actor: Nora Lindberg
- Background: Nora is an active member of the AT community and has been involved in many AT related research projects in her research lab
- Goal: Promote their research projects
- Motivation: Enrich the AT community and provide those solutions for a larger audience
Narrative: Nora is eager to participate in development discussions. She believes these discussions are great opportunities for learning and sharing knowledge. She is a member of different online developer communities, including the DeveloperSpace. Although she is not a developer herself, she represents the user’s perspective in these discussions and shares her years of experience working with AT users as well as AT developers. Sometimes these discussions give her an idea for future projects or how to enhance the previous ones. While working on international projects, she extensively utilizes DeveloperSpace Resources and Unified Listing to look for most recent inventions in the field of accessibility and also find about accessibility rules and regulations in different European countries in DeveloperSpace Resources section. She has included most of her lab’s projects and their documentations in the DeveloperSpace resource section. Whenever she stumbles upon any other solution that is relevant to her field, she leaves a comment and shares related links to other resources or projects.
Stakeholders Map for Accessing Resources
User Journey for Accessing Resources
Making it easy to access training material
- Main Actor: Elena Rossi
- Background: When Elena was searching for assistive technologies and accessible products, she realized that many websites are not accessible. She decided to start with her own blog to make sure all her posts, images and videos are accessible.
- Goal: Learn how to review a website for accessibility
- Motivation: Make her blog accessible and available to a wider audience
Narrative:
In her search for web accessibility training, Elena found scattered blog posts, several websites and some guidelines for web accessibility and many companies that offer web accessibility compliance consultation services. In one of those blogs, she saw several related tutorials offered through the resources section in the DeveloperSpace. Over the course of a month, she completed all the web accessibility training modules on DeveloperSpace. When she had questions, she would either post them on the tutorial page and get a reply from the community or send them directly to the person who had posted the tutorial. Upon completion of each tutorial, she would apply the lessons learned to her blog. She has also submitted a link to her blog to the DeveloperSpace curators. So, if that links gets approved, it will be added to resources and others who are new to the field can learn from her experience.
Stakeholders Map for Accessing Training Material
User Journey for Accessing Training Material
Making it easier, faster and cheaper to build, improve, assemble AT or integrate AT features in other products
- Main Actor: James Olsen
- Background: Felippe has found James through the Unified Listing and commissioned him to make their university’s web portal screen reader friendly
- Goal: Deliver a reliable and bug free product for his client on time and on budget
- Motivation: Save development time by finding a ready to use module
Narrative:
One of the challenges that James faces to ensure the university’s portal is screen reader friendly is to make the charts/diagrams on the site accessible. Instead of building a component from scratch, James is looking for an accessible chart authoring component that can be integrated within the portal. Therefore, teachers and administrators would be able to produce material that is compatible with screen readers at the point of authoring content.
Doing a quick Google search for ‘accessible web modules’, he comes across a project link in the DeveloperSpace. He checks out the project and searches DeveloperSpace for more accessible chart authoring components. A list of matching projects is generated. He quickly compares these projects on the DeveloperSpace quality dashboard to find out about their level of activity, number of contributors and frequency of passed/failed builds and tests. He notices that the Floe Chart Authoring Tool has a lot of recent activities with a reasonable number of contributors. He visits the project page and finds a link to the project’s Github repository as well as a link to the tool’s documentation in the DeveloperSpace resource section. In addition, on the project’s page there are several comments, discussions and links to StackOverflow and other developer communities with information about the tool’s integration. James checks out the code from the Github repository and starts working with it.
Stakeholders Map for Building AT
User Journey for Building AT
Making it easier and cheaper to offer services
- Main Actor: Mary Walsh
- Background: She has started offering online consultation services for stroke patients and their families through AoD service platform
- Goal: Offer her services to international clients without breaking local laws and policies
- Motivation: Make her services accessible for a broader audience
Narrative:
Since Mary has registered on the AoD platform set up by the Association of occupational therapists, she can offer online occupational therapy consultation for post stroke patients via AoD. As a result, she has been getting clients from all across Europe. Expanding her clientele internationally has made it challenging for her to provide the best service she can. Depending on their region, some of her clients speak a different language and have varied health coverages. To mitigate the language barrier, Mary either uses free online translation services, such as Google Translate or Skype Translator or the AoD forum to effectively communicate with her patients. However, she has more trouble finding out about their local health coverages for each patient from a different country. So, through AoD Social Network, she looks into the list of other AoD service providers to connect to some local providers and ask them about their local coverages, policies and fee guides. This would also enable her to build a professional network, which could be used for exchanging knowledge as well as referring patients when online services are not adequate.
Stakeholders Map for Offering Service
User Journey for Offering Service
Making it easier and cheaper to connect a human/machine/crowdsourced service to a person in need of that service
- Main Actor: Vasili Moroz
- Background: Vasili needs some guidance on how to help his wife regain her speech after her stroke
- Goal: To understand what she needs and take better care of her
- Motivation: Companionship and support
Narrative:
Before getting discharged from the rehab, Vasili was given some basic instructions about how to communicate with his wife at home since she had lost her speech and some motor skills after her stroke. He sometimes feels overwhelmed and desperate when he can’t communicate with his wife and doesn’t understand what she needs. Their daughter visits them often to make sure everything is in order. However, Vasili feels they need more professional help at home from time to time. The rehab recommends them to check AoD services. Their daughter helps Vasili set up an AoD account and finds an expert, Mary Walsh, who specializes in post stroke rehabilitation. She signs her dad up for the service and gets Mary’s phone number during registration of the service. Every time Vasili needs help, he can simply call Mary and then she can help him sign in her service and use it.
His daughter will also be able to establish the frequency of the service, if she wants. Vasili has been able to contact Mary a few times through this service where he has asked her questions and gotten feedback in less than an hour.
Stakeholders Map for Using AoD
User Journey for Using AoD
Making it easier and cheaper to set up a general or specific purpose web-based Assistance on Demand service environment
- Main Actor: Nora Lindberg
- Background: Nora and her team are working on AT web-based solutions and they are always looking for new projects and ideas to execute in this field
- Goal: Create a common gateway for people to search for services of their interest
- Motivation: Assisting people to easier find the services they need
Narrative: Nora attended an event organised by the United Spinal Association where she met several people suffering from spinal cord injuries. There, she was a witness of many conversations among the members of unified spinal association on how they found interesting services following different pathways. Peter heard of a service from Lary, Helen found a service at the internet and Bob had his son looking for services through the website of the nearby medical center. Nora realised that it would be much more convenient for all these people to have a gateway to the services they need.
Nora feels that as a research project for her lab they can set up an AoD “service portal” to allow its members to search in a unified manner and find services of their interest. However, setting up such a portal is anticipated to cost both time and money. She asks a team of her students to look deeper at the requirements of such a project.
Her students look for solutions and come across the GPII site. She watches a demo video about AoD and realises that AoD is open source (so money will be saved) and that it offers significant (tested) features such as
· The support of AAA, which is important for satisfying the needs of the members of AAPD
· Improved multimodal technical support with respect to the use of AoD
· The support of rating so that the member can build trust/quality knowledge on the services offered through the AoD platform
· The support of individual/part-time employees, in addition to professional service providers and organisation/companies
· The support of volunteers wishing to offer services to people in need
· Technical support for any service from community members.
· The formation of communities of volunteers who can assist on specific issues, e.g. digital literacy, or other.
Nora and her team download the AoD code from the DeveloperSpace, the installation instructions and guidelines, the documentation that describes the resources required to set up the AoD as well as any dependencies, the unit tests (i.e. representative tests for confirming that the AoD has been set up correctly) and contacts the GPII team for details on a few issues through the peer/community support module of the AoD portal.
They check the AoD requirements in terms of infrastructural resources and depending on the availability of resource in their lab software, she decides to host the AoD on XAPD infrastructure. Then, her team downloads the AoD code and documentation. Using the provided installation instructions, they install the downloaded open source code and configure it. After installation is complete, they use the provided tests to confirm the appropriate operation of the AoD platform. The tests are completed successfully, and Nora notifies her team to start advertising the platform so that it is populated with content.
Stakeholders Map for Setting Up AoD
User Journey for Setting Up AoD
Making it easier and cheaper for individuals/ organizations to transform documents to an accessible format or add such a feature to one's service
- Main Actor: James Olsen
- Background: James has been commissioned by Felipe to make their university portal screen reader friendly
- Goal: Make all PDF resources on the portal screen reader compatible
- Motivation: Save time and budget
Narrative: In an effort to make their university portal compatible with NVDA screen reader, Felipe has sent out a request to all faculty members to ensure their online course documents are screen reader friendly. However, most of the professors are not willing to spend any time converting their course material, specifically PDF documents to a screen reader compatible format.
Felipe discusses this issue with James and asks him to find a way to automate this process to encourage faculty to convert their documents. James begins looking for open source tools and plugins for automated document transformation. He finds a service for converting word and PDF documents to an accessible format on the DeveloperSpace. He checks out this service’s recent activities and number of contributors. James downloads the API from the DeveloperSpace and begins writing a module for durpal to easily integrate it in their site. He also shares this module on the DeveloperSpace, so others can use it to easily integrate this tool in their sites.
James adds a new section to the university portal for converting word and PDF documents to accessible text. It not only helps faculty to convert their documents to an accessible format with less efforts, but it also enables students to make their assignments more accessible before submitting them to the portal.
Stakeholders Map for Document Transformation
User Journey for Document Transformation
Making it easier and cheaper for individuals/ organizations to make audiovisual media more accessible or offer a media augmentation service
- Main Actor: James Olsen
- Background: James has been commissioned by Felipe to make their university portal screen reader friendly
- Goal: Make English and Spanish captions available for all audio visual media on the portal
- Motivation: Save time and budget
Narrative: To make the university portal fully accessible, James has to ensure all the online courses’ videos posted by faculty have both Spanish and English subtitles. Felipe has already found a few volunteers among their students who are ready to help with transcribing the videos. So, the only thing remaining is to find a way to add those transcriptions to the videos that are only hosted internally on the university portal and not on any public media such as YouTube or Vimeo. Since their budget is tight, James starts searching different free captioning tools, and start asking questions in various captioning communities like Amara to find an affordable solution. Through Amara’s captioning community, he comes across a link to the Media Augmentation infrastructure in the DeveloperSpace services. Checking this service, he finds several open source captioning tools and plugins. Based on their GitHub reviews, he chooses a plugin that seems to be the right solution for their purpose. James downloads the plugin and includes the code in their portal, so they can wrap subtitles around the embedded videos.
Stakeholder Map for Media Augmentation
User Journey for Media Augmentation
Making it easier and cheaper for individuals/ organizations to integrate identity and access management functionality in their web enabled products and services.
- Main Actor: Karl Hoffmann
- Background: Karl's team is developing a new web-based application, which is adapted based on user's preferences
- Goal: Focus time and budget on developing the application and find readily available components for common parts of the app
- Motivation: Save time and budget
Narrative: Karl and his team are working on a web-based math application for kids between 5 to 8 years old. Each child can create their own account and customize the learning environment, the difficulty level and the interface design based on their needs and preferences. Since they have a small development team, they rather focus their efforts and resources on building the game, and for more common features, such as account creation use available and open source components.
Karl and his team have already used a few components from DeveloperSpace for some of their other products. So this time, Karl starts his search right from the DeveloperSpace and luckily finds an identity and access management service that is already in place, tested and ready for integration. He sends out a link of this component (i.e. the web pages of DeveloperSpace where all information about this component can be found) to his team to check whether it can be incorporated in their product or not. Once they check out the code, and make sure there are no licensing conflict and technical issues, they pull a copy of full code from GitHub and modify the style to match their application. Once the component is ready, they incorporate it in their web-based application.
Stakeholders Map for Access Management Integration
User Journey for Access Management Integration
Making it easier and cheaper for developers/ other stakeholders to find communities that may be helpful to them or that they would like to become part of: Finding Partners to Collaborate on Projects
- Main Actor: Pauline Rey
- Background: Pauline’s organization needs to find and partner up with other organizations, volunteers and service providers
- Goal: Financially sustain and better position themselves in the field
- Motivation: Serve their members better
Narrative: Pauline’s organization is planning a conference on accessible learning for early education in the next spring. To find volunteers, collaborators, contributors and sponsors Pauline has searched the DeveloperSpace People and Communities Section. She has found a link to an AT volunteer community. Through this community she has found Elena who is helping her make sure their conference website is accessible. She is also searching other Professionals communities through DeveloperSpace People and Communities Section to find accessibility and early education experts and invite them to the conference as guest speakers. One such expert that she has found there and invited to the event is Nora Lindberg. She has also found a link to a few vendors in the Unified Listing (such as Karl’s company) and has offered them to sponsor the conference and showcase their products in the venue.
Stakeholders Map for Finding Partners & Collaborators
User Journey for Finding Partners & Collaborators
Making it easier and cheaper for developers/ other stakeholders to find communities that may be helpful to them or that they would like to become part of: Testing Products/Solutions with End Users
- Main Actor: Karl Hoffmann
- Background: Karl's team is developing a learning game application
- Goal: Test a new product with potential users
- Motivation: Deliver an inclusive and accessible game
Narrative: Karl’s team is in the preliminary stages of developing a learning game for kids with cerebral palsy. Karl is checking out different places to recruit users for testing and evaluating their product. He has already recruited some users from their former customers. However, he wants to build a more diverse group of users for evaluating their ideas and prototypes. Karl starts looking into the DeveloperSpace People and Communities section to find a link to people and communities who are available for product testing. He notices Nicholas’s challenge for making a game console more accessible for kids with cerebral palsy and assumes that Nicholas could be a potential user of their application. Karl contacts Nicholas to invite him to help with user testing and offers in exchange the final learning game and some of their other learning game applications.
Stakeholders Map for Testing Products with End Users
User Journey for Testing Products with End Users
Making it easier and cheaper for developers/ other stakeholders to find communities that may be helpful to them or that they would like to become part of: Connecting to Mentors and Offering Volunteer Services
- Main Actor: Elena Rossi
- Background: Elena has recently completed a training for web accessibility. However, she feels that she could benefit from a few more projects to gain more experience in the field
- Goal: Be able to independently review web accessibility
- Motivation: Get more experienced and build a career for herself
Narrative: Elena checks out DeveloperSpace People and Communities section and finds a link to several web accessibility consultants. She sends them an email to let them know that she is available to help with any upcoming projects as a volunteer. One of the consultants replies to her request and assigns Elena to one of the projects that he has recently contracted through DeveloperSpace. Since her mentor is being paid for that project, he reviews Elena’s work in detail to make sure it meets the client’s requirement and gives her direct feedback. He also recommends her to sign up in Unified Listing as a web accessibility consultant to get exposed to possible clients looking for such services.
Once she signs up in Unified Listiing as a volunteer web consultant, she is contacted by a local community center to check their website’s accessibility. Since she is on her own on this project, she takes advantage of the People and Communities Section in DeveloperSpace to connect to experts/mentors and ask questions and get feedback. She also uses the DeveloperSpace resources section extensively to check out accessibility guidelines. Elena has gained many new skills through these two projects and hopes to be able to get more projects in the future and be able to provide professional services and get paid for them.
Stakeholders Map for Offering Volunteer Service
User Journey for Offering Volunteer Service
Enable searching and finding solutions that are listed in the world in any of the federated databases, and doing market research
- Main Actor: Karl Hoffmann
- Background: Karl and his team have just published a new learning application
- Goal: Promote application
- Motivation: Make it available for a larger population
Narrative: Karl has published a new learning application on both Play Store and the App Store. He is planning to promote the app in different district school boards as well. His team is also going to present the application in several national exhibitions. Karl is also looking for larger online databases to register the application. After including it in GARI database, he finds Unified Listing. He submits their product in there and includes links to their company’s website, App Store, and Play Store. To grow their audience, Karl is also looking for different strategies, such as finding similar markets that the app can serve (e.g. stroke survivors who are re-learning how to read and write, etc.) or expanding internationally and localizing their products for different languages and cultures. So, he starts searching both GARI and UL database to find out which similar products are out there and who is their target audience. He is also reading consumer feedbacks and comments about these products to find out what is missing and which areas need improving.
Stakeholders Map for Listing Products in UL
User Journey for Listing Products in UL
Enable consumers search for solutions/ giving feedback about existing solutions/ providing feedforward about their needs and challenges/ leaving feedpeer for others with similar inquiries: Searching for products
- Main Actor: Olga Literski
- Need: Olga is looking for a service/product to be able to use her touch screen washing machine.
- Goal: Select the appropriate washing machine program with certainty and no mistakes
- Motivation: Stop destroying her clothes
Narrative: Olga is looking for a service to assist her while using her touch-screen washing machine. She is beyond fed up with destroying all of her wool and silk clothing. She wants to find a professional or product that could help. Although she is an experienced Internet user, she really has no idea where to look for information. She remembers that her friend Lisa told her about a unified database for accessible things. She types ‘accessibility unified database’ into the web browser search field and many links appear with this name. She remembers that her friend had shared a link on Facebook about a custom notepad. She uses that link and goes directly to the Unified Listing. She searches for applications and products that could help her by entering ‘braille touch pad + home appliances’.
Olga finds a few services similar to what she needs for her washing machine for residential heating or security systems. She reads their description, listens to their demo, reads the comments and rankings to see if any of them matches her request, and finally decides to contact one of the service developers who had several good reviews.
Stakeholders Map for Searching for Solutions
User Journey for Searching for Solutions
Enable consumers search for solutions/ giving feedback about existing solutions/ providing feedforward about their needs and challenges/ leaving feedpeer for others with similar inquiries: Requesting New Products
- Main Actor: Nicholas Gallo
- Background: Nicholas wants to connect a single switch to a video game console
- Goal: Be able to play games with his brother
- Motivation: Not feel left out
Narrative: Nicholas loves to be able to play video games with his brother. They are especially into FIFA as it offers a few options to adjust the speed and rate of the game. His dad has been able to connect a single switch to the game console, but they still need a program to map the controller’s commands to the switch. They haven’t been able to find anything in the AT market yet. So, Nicholas’s dad discusses this with his OT and she recommends creating a Challenge in the DeveloperSpace. They check out the DeveloperSpace Challenge Area and see several other ideas and projects that are proposed and wanted by users. Nicholas writes up a short description of his idea about an accessible game console and submits it to the DeveloperSpace. He hopes that his idea will grab some developer’s attention that are willing to build this product for any user who is interested in something similar.
Stakeholders Map for Submitting a Challenge to DSpace
User Journey for Submitting a Challenge to DSpace
Assisting small vendors/ individuals who can't sell their solutions easily otherwise, sell it (internationally) through UL
- Main Actor: James Olsen
- Background: James has built a few AT prototypes but can't sell them in any online market
- Goal: Be able to get his product to people who may benefit from it
- Motivation: Help others
Narrative: In addition to his freelance projects, James works on little projects on the side whenever he gets a chance. Recently he has built a piece of hardware that enables a person on wheelchair to use an umbrella and easily adjust its angle without using hands. This hardware can also be used for moms pushing a stroller or a shopping cart. He started a Kickstarter campaign but unfortunately, he couldn’t fund the project. He has built a few working prototypes so far and wants to sell them and if there is a demand, then he can make more. He has advertised them on Kijiji, eBay and Craigslist, but he could not even sell one. He has included this project in the GARI and Unified Listing database. While he was submitting the project to Unified Listing, he was asked whether he needs to sell the project or not. And he selected yes, and completed a few extra steps regarding the product price, taxes, and delivery methods and cost. Although he hasn’t been able to sell any of his prototypes yet, several people have viewed his product and he has got a few comments and one potential manufacturer who is interested in adding this feature to their products.
Stakeholders Map for Selling Products
User Journey for Selling Products
Proposed New Use cases to incorporate with above:
DEVELOPER – NEW
- Has developed a new app
- Wants to figure out what the market is for it, who else has done something (the competition), the features of the competition etc.
- Wants to be able to figure out how to market it
- Comes to site and looks it over
- Sees Tools
- Sees section on Marketing
- Sees Resources
- Finds the ‘Hints for using the DeveloperSpace" link
- Finds document talking about new developers (also available in Resources section)
- Sees this as a special page for new developers that lists all the ways the site could be used by a new developer
- Uses the Resources section to look up key Resources for the users that he is targeting his product at
- Uses the MasterList of Strategies to see if there's any techniques that he could be using in his product
- Looks in the Building Blocks section to see if there is code for a new feature he found that he would like to incorporate.
- He finds solutions and components he can use in the Building Blocks section.
- Some he can use directly.
- Some are not written in the same language he uses. However, he can pull the approach and algorithm from it and he re-implements it in his own code
- He uses the Unified Listing to search and find other products by other manufacturers that might compete with his product
- He also checks out their features and descriptions to see if there are any features there that he should include in his product
- He hasn't really had a chance to test his product much with users other than the person he designed it for. So he uses the "Find a Tester" section in the Communities area to find people who can test his software for him.
- He finds both consumers and professional testers.
- He uses the professionals to do a heuristic evaluation
- and the consumers to do usability and functionality testing
- He finds a document in the Resources section (it was pointed to from the new developer document) that tells him about the importance of making his program "localizable" or "internationalize double".
- He uses this information and Resources he finds in the Community section to make sure his code can be used internationally (or at least for an initial set of target languages with a mechanism for localizing it if demand warrants)
- Once he has the product in shape he has it listed in the Unified Listing in order to provide international Marketing.
- He particularly likes the fact that putting it into the Unified Listing will automatically have it entered in all of the other federated databases internationally.
- Since he does not have a mechanism to do fulfillment and handle the processing of payments he lists this product in the openMarketplace feature of the Unified Listing
- This instantly gives him the ability to sell his product internationally.
MAINSTREAM DEVELOPER
- Jim works for the mainstream software company and has been charged with building accessibility into their product.
- He enters the DeveloperSpace but does not at first use the " Hints for using the DeveloperSpace "link because he never follows instructions.
- He roots around on the site for a while and finds the following items.
- The Unified Listing, which he uses to find if there are other mainstream products like his the have accessibility features and what features they have
- The testers section in the Community area, which he can use to test his software when he has the access features Incorporated.
- A ton of information about people with disabilities that he finds invaluable since he doesn't really understand the populations that he's trying to add features for.
- Information about regulations and rules on accessibility - that might be the reason why his boss has suddenly asked him to tackle this project.
- It includes information on one of the laws his boss mentioned but also others that may apply to his product.
- This includes not only the rules but also useful information on how to understand them
- The MasterList, which he finds very instructive.
- It seems to talk about all the different things that people have done to make products more accessible along with products that have used the techniques and research references.
- He finds it particularly useful since it's like a survey of all the strategies all in one place with pointers to other documents for the features he wants to more information on
- In the Community section he finds listservs that he can join to find others who are both neophytes like himself and also old hands at putting accessibility in mainstream products
- The listing of conferences when developers, manufacturers and users, along with dates, and where are held, and which conferences are stronger for which types of technology are of greater interest to him.
- Much later, he looks at the " Hints for using the DeveloperSpace " and finds that he would have found his way around much faster if he had looked in the first Thai place. However, he found a number things on his own that are not in the guidance on that page. He uses the comment feature on the bottom of the page to suggest other things that that he discovered that should have been on the page.
PHD STUDENT LOOKING FOR THESIS TOPIC
- Comes to DeveloperSpace and walks through the menus.
- He first notices the MasterList of accessibility strategies and explores this. He finds it quite educational because it brings together the strategies but also links not only to products but also research papers on the different areas.
- He finds a number of different papers that relate to things that interest him. He also notices that some of the research lists are dated and so he uses the comment field to add some references. The 5 dollars per new reference used reward is particularly enticing and he uploads a list of 20 references that he had found on various topics listed there (16 of his are used)
- He is surprised by an email a week later with his payment at the other end of the link. After staring at the email for a long time and calling the phone number to be sure it's legitimate he downloads the cash -- makes a note to later upload some other research that he's found.
- At this point he realizes that he is finding new things in places that he thought he had already looked at - so he reads the " Hints for using the DeveloperSpace" link and finds there's a page specifically for researchers like himself
- He goes to that page and discovers that the Unified Listing and the Challenges page are also top Resources for someone like him.
- He goes to the Challenges page and discovers that it lists everything from small tasks up through PhD level dissertation topics and even grand challenges that his professor might find interesting for there team of students to consider
- Although some of the grand challenges are going to take major funding agencies initiative to try to address there are others that he thinks maybe addressable by a small group of dedicated students. And professors.
- He then heads to the Unified Listing but is at first somewhat disappointed.
- There are a lot of products that are much the same but there is very little in the area that he is particularly interested in.
- On second consideration, he decides he's not disappointed but inspired since his work would be even more important -- and more helpful to real people, which was his goal to start with.
THE SAME PHD STUDENT TWO YEARS LATER
- Having worked on the problem for the last two years, he has a preliminary device which he thinks would be useful to people. However, he is still finishing his PhD and then wants to go on to an academic career.
- He is not sure what to do now in order to get this idea out and commercially available without sinking his ability to finish his PhD and pursue his career.
- He returns to the site and goes back to the "Hints for using the DeveloperSpace" section.
- Here he finds an entry for people who have developed ideas but do not want to Market them themselves.
- He this learns how to use the Community section to find other people who are interested in taking ideas to market
- He learns how simpler aids can be marketed by an individual using the Unified Listing for dissemination and the open marketplace for sales.
- He worries about support but again finds people in the Community section that are set up to provide support for other people's products
- He decides to explore both options further since he kind of wants to keep his hand in but is not sure that that would be best in the long run.
USER
- A curious and inventive user who is not a programmer but has lots of ideas for how other people ought to design his assistive technologies and features they should include.
- He actually has never heard of the DeveloperSpace but did hear about the Unified Listing as being the best place to go to find all of the different solutions that are available internationally
- She starts out by looking up her own assistive technologies in the Unified Listing.
- In looking at the entry she noted that there was a place where she could leave feedback to the vendors about features that she would like to see more problems that she is having.
- She fills out both the problems and the new features she would like to see for her AT and sends them off.
- She also rates her products and leave some notes for other users about tricks that she's found to make her AT work better as well as problems that she found that bedeviled her until she figured them out
- She also noticed on the side of the Unified Listing search and product pages that there was a link that talked about Development projects like these products that she was looking at.
- She clicked on the link and found herself over in a place called the DeveloperSpace
- She landed in a section that is designed to describe different development projects that people were doing -- developing new access solutions or features.
- It also had links to places where she could pose other ideas for other projects or technologies that she would like to see
- There is even a place where she could vote for different projects that have been listed by others to add her voice to the request for solution set.
- In some cases they identified good needs but she thinks their suggested approach to solving them is wrong. So she as her own ideas about other ways to address the problems.
- Sometimes she adds these on the projects and sometimes she creates a new challenge to describe them.
- The more she digs around in this DeveloperSpace the more interesting she finds it.
- A lot of it is technical and uses programming languages etc. that she's not familiar with.
- But a lot of it that talks about what the needs are and the strategies for solving them. This is her forte and she has never seeing a place that looked for and welcomed people who could describe problems and approaches to solutions without being programmers themselves.
- In the Community Section she signs up to be a tester and also to be on teams of people looking for people who had disabilities to join their development project.
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT
- Lee has to do a research paper for his high school science class and has chosen the topic of assistive technology because he has a friend down the street who has a disability. He's heard about the Unified Listing and he goes there to look at all the different assistive technologies around medication and computer access. He quickly discovers the link to "other research projects which takes him into the//into a place called the DeveloperSpace. This turns out to be a treasure trove of information. He heads into the Resources area and finds links to papers about disability, assistive technologies, laws and regulations, a MasterList of all the different strategies for making things more accessible each with research papers off it.
- In no time, he has amassed an extended list of both research papers and pragmatic reports and "how to use".
- He completes his assignment and gets in A.
- But more importantly it's opened a whole new world that he didn't know existed. He decides to focus his studies on developing skills to allow him to further contribute to in this area
End-to-end Use Case April 2017
Elena, who lives in Budapest, needs to plan a trip to France to attend her sister’s wedding which is scheduled for June 17, 2017. Elena doesn’t know much about France, doesn't read or speak French, and is starting to plan her trip from scratch. Elena is excited to take the trip and is also a bit nervous. She's begun using braces to help steady her when she's walking, and she wants to make sure she'll have a smooth time traveling and attending the wedding.
Elena Rossi Persona Image
- 21 years old
- Unemployed
- Holds a college diploma in Information Science
- Active blogger. Created an online blog about young individuals diagnosed with MS
To begin researching her trip, Elena first goes to google.hu to see if she can plan the whole trip, but soon realizes that she doesn’t know enough about Paris, the transportation options, or how to find out about accessible services, and she quickly becomes overwhelmed with the search. She tries to find a trip planner for disabled travelers in Europe to plan her whole trip from start to finish.
<How does she find or hear about the DeveloperSpace?> Elena goes to the DeveloperSpace website to look for any companies offering travel planning for disabled travelers in Europe. She finds Sage Travel is listed and they offer a number of travel packages and services. They offer so much she isn’t quite sure how to proceed. She sends them an email explaining what her needs are rather than picking through the pre-planned tours they offer. She also pokes around the DeveloperSpace because the Sage Travel site doesn’t mention “Tour, France” specifically and that is where her sister’s wedding is. The details of Elena's trip are occurring to her as she's beginning to dig into planning, so she decides to post a request for help (a personal travel concierge) to the DeveloperSpace. Elena knows her dates (she will stay for 2 nights in Tours), knows her destination, knows her budget (her future brother-in-law is going to help her up to 2,500 Euro) -- she has to make it all happen now.
Ultimately, Elena gets 4 responses to her various efforts to get help and information:
1. Sage Travel
When Elena gets an email response from Sage Travel (whom she emailed) they tell her that they can get her to Paris and that they're willing to help her figure out getting to Tours, but they don’t deal directly with that city, so it will cost her extra. Sage Travel offers Elena one cost inclusive of all travel and services bundled together and they estimate the cost will be 2,700 Euro. They are vague about what "services" this will include.
2. Personal Travel Concierge
Emilie sees Elena's request for a personal travel concierge and responds. She lets Elena know she has done this before, has started her own business to help travelers, and is bonded and insured in France. Emilie would be happy to help Elena plan and execute her travel. Emilie explains that Elena must pay for all travel expenses upfront (e.g. airfare, hotel, train -- anything that can be booked in advance) and then Emilie will invoice Elena for additional services at 10 Euro an hour to plan the trip for her. Emilie also is willing to help Elena navigate through Paris (meeting her at the airport) and even accompany her to Tours if she'd like at a rate of 100 Euro/ day plus any expenses (train, hotel in Tours, food).
So, Elena can spend 60 Euro to have Emilie book her travel, or
150 Euro w/ breakfast for one-night, single room in Hotel in Tours
- 600 Euro Hotel for 2 people
- 350 Euro to fly from Budapest to Paris
42 Euro one-way train from Paris to Tours per person for a business class ticket that will give Elena a more comfortable chair
-165 Euro
1105 Euro TOTAL (minus meals and other incidentals for Emilie)
3. Fred from Ohio, who sees Elena's request for help on the DeveloperSpace, traveled to the Loire Valley on a wine tour last year. He uses a scooter and tells Elena he'd be happy to share his insider information on having mobility challenges and traveling in the Loire Valley. He leaves her his email address to follow-up.
4. Someone else on the DeveloperSpace thread notices Elena's request for help. His name is Marco and he responds to Elena that he can do the whole thing for her and accompany her from start to finish. He says he is willing to charge her 200 Euro less than whatever Emilie has offered her.
This is a lot of information for Elena to process. She decides to think about all of this and to visit a local travel agent in Budapest the next day.
She visits Well Travel Budapest the next day and walks into the storefront. She notices they stare at her braces as she's coming in the door and aren't quite sure how to help her or ask her if she needs help. She sits down at the desk and begins to tell the agent about her upcoming trip and her needs. The agent tells Elena that they can book the trip no problem, but they have never found services for someone with a disability and are unsure what is available in Tours or how to find it. They say they can look into it and she should come back the next day for a quote for the trip.