Nathalie PICAN, Usability specialist

France Telecom Research & Development

Human Interfaces Division (DIH)

Laboratory of Quality of Service Evaluation and customer acceptability (EQS)

FTR&D / DIH / EQS

4 rue du Clos Courtel BP 59

35512 Cesson Sevigne, FRANCE

Phone : +33 2 99 12 47 66

nathalie.pican@Francetelecom.com

UPA 2001 / Position paper for Workshop N° 6

Exploring Measurement and Evaluation Methods for Accessibility

Activity context

France Telecom, the largest Telecommunication Company in France, wants to allow people to communicate wherever, whenever and with whoever they want; this means: easing everyone’s communication, whether they are handicapped or not, whether in a working situation or that of daily life.

Under this framework, different research projects have been launched to explore the possibilities offered by new communication technologies in terms of ergonomic and technical adaptation and of analysing the uses by people said to be “handicapped”; more specifically, it is about:

· Deepening our knowledge on less fortunate people and their relationships with the rest of society.

· Easing access to communication tools, for handicapped people.

o Easing interaction between handicapped and non-handicapped people through use of new communication tools,

o Easing interaction between the handicapped and the rest of the environment by new communication tools.

· Deepening our knowledge on different types of interaction (haptic, audio, visual…)

All of these objectives decline along with the considered deficiency (visual deficiency – blindness or pore sight; audio deficiency – deaf or hard of hearing; other handicaps…).

Our lab E.Q.S, Quality of Service Evaluation and customer acceptability, deals with evaluation of perceived quality of telecommunication products and services. Different skills are grouped in this lab: psychophysics (for voice, audio and picture quality assessment), psychology and human factors (for usability evaluation), computer science (as support for automatic tools design and development), Marketing. Evaluation operations may bring one or several of twenty different methods that can be grouped in three main categories: field studies, lab tests and automatic measures of media quality.

Under France Telecom’s work for the handicapped, our laboratory has taken charge of several tasks. I personally am responsible for work carried out on the development of measurements and adapted Quality of Service Evaluation and customer acceptability methods. On the other hand, in the past I have carried out numerous pieces of work in the handicap domain. This is why I am very interested in participating in workshop 6.

Current work in the handicap domain

· Testing the image quality around auditory deficiencies

Under the framework of developing the videoconference service, this is about determining the best image quality (frequency, size of the window…) to allow people with hearing difficulties to dialogue using sign language.

· Adaptation of evaluation methods for telecommunication products and services

The objective is to systematically integrate users with sensory (visual or audio) deficiencies and to make these services available for usability tests carried out by France Telecom.

· Participation in the development of a tool evaluating the accessibility of Web sites written in Braille.

This tool, developed in collaboration with the INSERM, allows us not only to find the obstacles of a site so that it can be consulted via a non-visual Braille interface, but also gives the developer a means to remedy such problems (ergonomic recommendations, rules defined by the WAI…).

Previous work in the handicap domain

· Independent consultation in the handicap sector

- Intervention in projects to conceive dedicated interfaces and/or those accessible to handicapped people.

- Adaptation of businesses’ work stations for physically handicapped people and in employment centres for mentally handicapped people.

· Doctorate research on the ergonomy of non-visual interfaces

Work to take into account the disparity of a visual handicap and bringing new information technologies into the conception of adapted human-computer interfaces (cf. publications below).

Publication

Burger D., Pican N. , Felix Y. & Bouraoui A. (1996), L’apport possible des nouvelles technologies pour l’étude active de documents, In : Actes du colloque INSERM-ANPEA, Les nouvelles technologies dans l’éducation des handicapés visuels, 10-11 juin, Paris.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1995), Utilisation combinée du geste, de la parole et du toucher dans une interface pour aveugles, In : Actes du XXXième congrès de la SELF, Biarritz.

Pican N. (1995),Du braille papier au braille éphémère : l’adaptation des stratégies, Journée ERGO-IDF, 16 mai , C.N.A.M., Paris.

Burger D. & Pican N. (1995), Rendre les interfaces graphiques accessibles aux déficients visuels, In : Safran & Assimacopoulos (Ed.), Le déficit visuel. De la neurophysiologie à la pratique de la réadaptation, Edition Masson, Paris.

Bellik Y., Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), Méditor, un prototype d’interface multimodale pour la manipulation de textes braille enrichis, In : Acte du séminaire INSERM-ANPEA, Interfaces multimodales pour handicapés visuels, Paris.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), Poste de travail informatique et handicap visuel, In : Actes du colloque de l’Institut National des Télécommunications, Les technologies de l’information dans le domaine de la santé : Quels produits et services pour demain ?, Evry.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), Human factors in the evaluation of a computer interface for the blind In : Actes du congrès WWDU’94, Milan.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), Spécificité de la conception d’interfaces pour handicapés visuels, In : Actes du XXIXième congrès de la SELF, Ergonomie et Ingénierie, Paris.