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I would like to talk about our latest research that improves Web usability for the hard-of-hearing by redesigning a Web page.
The redesign was motivated by a close analysis of a number of performance data including eye-movement.

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Here is the outline of my talk.
I start by describing the background and motivation of this study.
Then I will describe two things to consider when redesign the page.
First, the results of our previous eye-tracking studies, which showed that the hard-of-hearing would use Web pages very differently from the hearing.
Second, the Web accessibility Guidelines, Principle 3.
Next, I will show a redesign and the results of an eye-tracking experiment that confirms the redesign did improve the performance of the hard-of-hearing.
Finally, I conclude by suggesting an important lesson from this redesign experience.

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Consideration of Web content accessibility for the hard-of-hearing is usually limited to the issue of translating auditory information into sign language and/or text annotation. 
However, from our initial study , we got the results that the hard-of-hearing people interacted with the non-audio-web page differently than the hearing people.
The studies reveal that this simple translation is not sufficient to allow the hard-of-hearing to attain accessibility.
We believe “equality” for the hard-of-hearing people will be achieved by designing “eQuality” Web-pages based on the understanding of their interaction and by accumulating success cases to Guidelines.

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I will describe the results of our previous studies.
Here are four performance measures that we found differences. 

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The first is the Differences in Scan Patterns.
The scan patterns of the hard-of-hearing were significantly different from those of the hearing.
Here are the results of eye fixation patterns.
The hearing, to your left, showed vertical scanning paths, but the hard-of-hearing, to your right, didn’t show a coherent pattern.

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The next is the Differences in Number of Errors and Correct Link Selection Times.
In order to accomplish the task, the participants had to select a correct link, but they made a number of wrong selections.
The second column of the table shows the average number of errors, the hard-of-hearing committed errors more often than the hearing. 4.9 VS 2.6.
The third column shows the average time to select correct link, the hard-of-hearing took longer time than the hearing. 2min 42sec vs 1min 27sec.

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The next is the Differences in Processing Times per link selection.
This plot shows the time to select correct link as a function of the number of link selections.
The blue squires are from the hearing and they align on the regression line, whose slope corresponds to the time necessary for the hearing to click a link.
On the other hand, the pink circles are from the hard-of-hearing and they don’t show any correlations.
These results imply that the hearing took a certain amount of fixed time before selecting a link but the hard-of-hearing did not.

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The next is the Differences in the nature of Link Selections.
These figures show the proportions of the types of selected links.
A prominent feature is that the hearing selected text links that conveyed semantic information more often than the hard-of-hearing, 49% versus 21%.
Conversely, the hard-of-hearing selected non-semantic information more often than the hearing, 62% versus 36%

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This radar chart combines the two pie charts to clarify the differences. 
The three link types plotted in the upper-right direction correspond to the semantic-information links (Heading, task related links, and Index), 
and the four link types in the bottom-left direction correspond to the non-semantic information links (Animation, Picture, Non-Related, and cryptic direct symbol link). 
The blue line, denoting the hearing, dominates in the upper-right direction, and the pink line, denoting the hard-of-hearing, dominates in the bottom-left direction. 
It is clear from the figure, that the types of links the participants selected, were significantly different, in terms of the amount of semantic information contained in the links.

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When redesigning, we must conform to guidelines. 
This shows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Principle 1 suggests that providing alternative information to audio is the key for web accessibility for the hard-of-hearing. 
Principle 3 says “content and controls must be understandable.”
Our redesign must conform to Principle 3.

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By carefully considering the experimental results, we conjectured that the design of the web page was not self-evident from the way the information was organized.
The hard-of-hearing participants would have had difficulty in capturing the hidden semantic structure.
Then we made two changes to the page, which were very small from the designer’s point of view.
First, we changed the label expressions of column titles to Japanese.
Second, we redesigned the page by adding vertical lines that effectively separated it into columns, consistent with the informational organization of the page.

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In order to test the effectiveness of the redesign, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment where five hard-of-hearing persons participated. 
We recorded their link selections and eye movements.
The data were compared to the experimental results from our previous experiment, where 8 hard-of-hearing and 10 hearing were joined.

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This slide compares the scan patterns before redesign, to your left, and after redesign, to your right, from one of the hard-of-hearing participants.
The scanning pattern after redesign shows coherency, and the performance data improved significantly.
The average number of errors decreased from 4.9 for the original page to 0.8 for the redesigned page, 
and the average time taken to select the correct link decreased to 42 seconds, which was 2 minutes faster than the time required for the original page. 
This result confirms that the redesign successfully improved usability for the hard-of-hearing participants.

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We reported a successful redesign based on the understandings of web-interaction behavior of hard-of-hearing.
An important lesson is that what is obvious for the web-literate is not necessarily obvious for the hard-of-hearing.
Their eye movements told us clearly where the source of confusion was and suggested an effective design change. 
A “small” design consideration resulted in a “large” improvement in the usability of the web site. <c>
Here are two issues we will continue to address in the future.
For “Equality,” we plan to establish a method for designing Web-based educational materials that are understandable for the hard-of-hearing.
For “eQuality,” we continue to accumulate success cases that give life to the Web accessibility Guidelines.

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Thank you very much for your attention.
The simple translations are not always effective, at least in Japan, since only 10% to 20% of the hard-of-hearing can use the mother-tongue sign language.