After submitting my HCI awareness assignment for IST 649, I realized that my awareness are very intuitive, on an initial stage of user experiences through interactions of computer software/applications. What can be learned and currently we are learning from the course are the reasons behind all these interfaces/designs that we interact with. For example, the human visual ability decides the best way for the output color scheme, the understanding of human physical limitations help engineers to design mouses, etc.
After I came to U.S, I've been very impressed of the pervasive infrastructure for disabilities in U.S. Every building I’ve been to, even small snack bars have restrooms for people using wheelchairs. While discussing it with my friends in China, they tell me that some buildings also have such restrooms. However, some of those special designed restrooms are useless because there is no way for people on wheelchair to get into the buildings. There are only stairs for people who can walk freely, no ramps for wheelchairs. What is more impressive is the equipment on Centro buses helping people to get on the bus by themselves. For most of the time, the entrance of the bus is common stairs for people to get on, when a person on wheelchair wants to get on the bus, a special platform will be used. The driver controls the platform to let it reach the ground and wait for the wheelchair to get on the platform. Then, the platform will be elevated to reach the bus floor. After that, the driver will help the passenger on the wheelchair to move to the space specified for them and secure the wheelchair with belt. With such equipment, people on the wheelchair could go to distant places all by themselves without accompanied by others. Although wheelchairs do offer people the ability to go outside, many of them still prefer to stay at home for they don’t want to require assistance by other people.
One thing we have discussed in class is the color design for color-blinded people, which possess more than 10 percent of the world population. Being asked if web designer should take color blinded people into consideration, Prof. Zhang said it was their own choice to decide the community the website aimed to serve. And Ashley, a student said what was interesting here was her instructor from a web design class said the web designers should meet the needs of the majority, which are non color-blinded people, since it is impossible to serve every niche of the population.
To me, the discussion with color-blinded people leads to another question. In China, students with visual disabilities will not be accepted in some specific majors. One of my best friends chose to study economics instead of science or engineering was because she has color deficiency and it would be limitations for her to study in such majors. My experiences in U.S makes me think that there might be some better solutions than simply closing the doors for such people. So, here comes the question, what is the situation in U.S?
Two months ago, in November, 2009, two universities, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University refused to buy more Kindles because the device does not support visually impaired students to use it. The universities will take the stand until accessibility have been improvement have been by the company.
0 comments:
Post a Comment