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Every year, the EU Benchmark Survey assesses the quality of online public services in Europe. For the first time, the survey also looked at the users experience when accessing on-line public services, in recognition of the growing importance of this topic, and found mixed results.
From the press release:
However the report itself puts some further qualification (page 27) on the above optimistic assessment of the user experience of national portals:
The survey, carried out for the European Commission by consultants Capgemini, examined over 14,000 web sites offering 20 basic public services in the 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Turkey. In 2007 the online sophistication of public service delivery reached an overall score of 76%, while 58% of the measured public services are fully available online. Austria stands out both on sophistication and full on-line availability, with scores of 99 and 100% respectively. Portugal has made major progress since 2006 and Malta and Slovenia stand out as countries that have embraced eGovernment and advanced online service delivery and therefore top the charts in 2007. - Read press release |
| Posts in category 'Disabled' |
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22 September 2007
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5 August 2007
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As baby boomers grope their way through middle age, they are encountering the daily indignities that accompany a downward slide in visual acuity: trying to read a road map in a car at night; cellphones designed for 20-year-old eyes; the minuscule letters on a bottle of aspirin; nutrition information squeezed onto a bag of peanuts.
And unlike their parents and grandparents, they are not shy about expressing their displeasure, in some cases, taking matters into their own hands or prompting some companies to pay attention. |
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2 August 2007
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Steve Kurzman is a user experience researcher with a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
He is also a below-knee amputee. My New Leg is a blog, or online diary, about his experience of getting a new prosthesis and the process involved in how amputees get prostheses. The goal of the blog is to document the delivery of prosthetic limbs in the American health care field as well as to report back from the clinic on the personal experience of wearing one and getting a new one. |
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13 April 2007
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The UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) is calling for innovative project proposals from front-line workers, carers and people with direct experience of mental distress, to tackle some of the key challenges surrounding mental health in the UK, reports the eGov Monitor.
The initiative forms part of the first stage of NESTA’s wider ‘Innovation Challenges’ initiative. NESTA Chief Executive Jonathan Kestenbaum explains, “The rising cost to the economy of mental health problems alone is enough to support the need for us to find new ways of addressing this issue. We need to empower people at the grass roots to come forward and work together to develop more innovative, user-focused solutions.” NESTA will look to fund and develop local projects from individuals or teams with experience in mental health (including user- and carer groups). The organisation will be looking for projects which, with the right support and guidance, will have the potential to grow into national projects with real impact. Project ideas can address any aspect of mental health, across all life stages and in any setting. Projects are likely to range from ways to break down the stigma of mental illness to encouraging the involvement of users in re-designing their own care. They may focus on new and improved processes and services, but could also take the shape of new products or technologies. NESTA is particularly interested in ideas that involve collaboration between different disciplines or different areas of mental health practice. |
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17 November 2006
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France Telecom has launched i-mag, a new interactive e-magazine on innovation.
The first issue looks at the Group’s involvement in the field of disability, from the designing of new communication services, to working on new interfaces. This initiative is part of France Telecom’s strategic programme NExT (New Experience in Telecommunications), which aims to “make the customer the centre of his or her communications world”. France Telecom takes a design for all approach: “Facilitating access for all customers to all its products and services”. The Group is developing new communication services “that use the communication mode most suited to the person you are calling”. They are also developing new interfaces, including those that use haptic technology. The longer-term goal however is “to come as close as possible to real face-to-face conversation between two people”. |
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14 August 2006
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In a reflective article written as a follow-up to the Participatory Design conference held a few weeks ago in Trento, Italy, Ann Light dissects the difference between participatory design (PD) and user-centred design (UCD).
“What is the status of the ‘users’ you are working with?” she asks. “Are they treated as providing inspiration for design or are they treated as co-designers?” Citing Patrizia Marti of the Communication Science Department at the University of Siena, Italy, Light writes that with the ‘user-centred inspiration’ approach “there is no accountability to the people who are the source of this material, or return to them for further engagement.” According to Marti, “the origins of PD are deeply intertwined with trade unions’ efforts to bring democracy into work domains. So there is a political energy in the philosophy of PD about engaging people in the designs that affect them. This desire to democratise is not apparent in much current UCD work. […] She pointed out that end-users are still often considered as Human Factors rather than Human Actors.” |
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17 July 2006
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In an article on the website of MEX - the PMN Mobile User Experience conference, editorial director Marek Pawlowski writes about the future of user interfaces, mobile handsets and human integration.
“Technologies exist today to help evolve mobile devices towards more natural, seamless interfaces.” But, Pawlowski ponders, “if technology [were to] negate the requirement for a physical handset, will users eventually abandon mobile devices? Is the handset fundamentally a barrier to a good user experience? Is the best user interface one which doesn’t exist at all?” “The primary barrier to more ‘human’ mobile interfaces is humans themselves. We are creatures of habit and followers of fashion. We are accustomed to interfacing through keypads and soft-key confirmation buttons and we will be slow to change our ways. Indeed, there is an argument the last 20 or so years or ‘keyboard culture’ have fundamentally changed our perception of what is natural. For many young teenagers, key-based input is their first language: they text in preference to voice calls, they instant message in preference to group discussion and they type in preference to handwriting.” “Owning the mobile device itself may also be additive to experience. In a society which values consumption and where marketing messages convince us to aspire towards physical ownership of the latest technology, we have come to naturally associate the best experience with the most expensive devices. Vanity, competitiveness, fashion - all of these thoughts govern our willingness to invest time in learning to work with inefficient interfaces.” |
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5 July 2006
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Older people are missing out on critical services because they do not use the internet, a report says.
Just 28% of people over the age of 65 have home internet access, compared to a UK average of 57% of households. As a result, pensioners cannot access government services as well as the most competitive deals on commercial goods. The findings are part of a wider survey by a consumer panel at telecoms regulator Ofcom looking at the online access of marginalised groups. The survey also looked at online use by disabled people and those living in rural areas. |
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3 July 2006
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Reflecting the development in its core business since foundation thirteen years ago, the European Institute for Design and Disability, EIDD made the major decision to change its name to “EIDD - Design for All Europe“, with the abbreviations “EIDD” and “European Institute” continuing in use.
This decision reflects the Institute’s longstanding focus on Design for All as a path towards the achievement of social inclusion following an holistic methodology. At the same time, the Institute’s new name maintains a clear reference to its roots as the European Institute for Design and Disability, thus maintaining a cultural continuity of essential importance to any complete understanding of Design for All. |
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3 July 2006
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The latest newsletter of the Indian Design for All Institute is devoted to anthropology and design.
It features the articles “Cultural dimensions and global user-interface development” by Aaron Marcus, and “Sampling in design research: toward ethnographic segments” by Ken C. Erickson. Design for All Institute Of India is a self financed, non-profit voluntary organisation which seeks corporate and public partnership in order to carry forward its very ambitious agenda of pro-actively building bridges of social inclusion between the design community and all other groups whose activities can be positively influenced by a coherent application of design methodology. Design for All means creating products, services and systems to cater to the widest possible range of users’ requirements. Strangely enough, the website of the Design for All Institute is barely accessible on a Mac. Download newsletter (pdf, 1015 kb, 48 pages) |
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29 June 2006
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The 34 EU member states on Wednesday signed up for the “Internet for all” action plan, designed to ensure that the most Web-disadvantaged groups can get online.
The EC has now pledged to increase broadband coverage across the continent to 90 percent by 2010. Rural areas are still underserved, according to the Commission, with about 60 percent penetration. Urban areas fare better and are already at the 90 percent mark. The EC has also committed to putting new measures in place to halve exclusion rates in skills and digital literacy by 2010. The Commission is studying the possible introduction of mandatory accessibility standards in public procurement, to be brought in by 2010. The EC is also considering legislation to improve e-accessibility. According to recent research, 81 percent of Web sites in the United Kingdom are inaccessible to disabled people, while a separate report found that only 3 percent of European public-sector Web sites met W3C accessibility guidelines. (via Pathfinder) |
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15 May 2006
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The BBC news website reports on the e-inclusion charter, one of the key projects of the it enables consortium, which aims “to research the use of information and communication technology (ICT) by disabled people”.
The e-inclusion charter aims “to provide clear guidelines on how best to develop ICT working to ensure it includes and benefits disabled people”. It is based on the premise that “disabled and older people should have the same rights to participate in the Information Society as other citizens. Information and communication technology (ICT) such as personal computers, mobile phones and interactive TV should be tools that help overcome barriers they face in education, the workplace and social life.” In the BBC article (excerpt below), the organisers stress that they are aiming at more than just increasing accessibility for disabled users, but want to promote usability improvements for everyone. The consortium partners include the Alliance for Digital Inclusion (ADI), a pan-industry body focusing on the impact of information and communication technology on our society, with AOL UK, BT, Cisco Systems UK, IBM UK, Intel UK & Ireland, Microsoft UK and T-Mobile as its members, RNID, the Disabled Living Foundation, and the leading technology development consultancy Scientific Generics. From the BBC story: Technology firms are being targeted in a bid to make hardware and software easier to use for everyone. The initiative, backed by disability charities and big firms like BT, aims to make hi-tech firms take usability more seriously. They want to get companies thinking about how to make goods and services easy to use while design work is done. Firms signing up will be expected to make big changes to all the things they do that customers encounter. Despite the involvement of charities that try to raise awareness of accessibility issues, Guido Gybels, director of new technologies at the RNID, said the charter aimed to help everyone. “We are not talking about small groups of people with specialist needs,” he said. Instead, said Mr Gybels, the charter wanted to make companies apply accessibility and usability to everything they produce - no matter who buys it or uses it. |
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30 March 2006
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More than half of government and council websites contain errors and cause problems for disabled people, research shows.
Some 60% of UK government websites contain HTML errors, according to a study by the University of Southampton. A similar proportion do not comply with guidelines created to improve web access, it found. Adam Field, from the university’s School of Electronics and Computer Science, who conducted the survey, said not complying with these guidelines could prevent some individuals from being able to access the websites. He also pointed out disabled people were likely to require government services and, therefore, had even more reason to want to use government websites. |
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1 March 2006
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[New flexible work] arrangements are bringing jobs to thousands of people with disabilities, including those with spinal cord injuries and vision loss. Fast computers and broadband connections have become so inexpensive and reliable that location is now not an issue for certain jobs, like customer service.
At the same time, an abundance of technology is available to help disabled people operate computers, like software that lets a blind person use a keyboard instead of a mouse to navigate a program, and voice synthesizers that turn text into speech. There are also alternatives to the mouse for people with limited use of their arms. |
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24 February 2006
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The UK Design Council published its first RED report: ‘Open Health’, following up on the paper “Health: Co-creating Services” (which was discussed here).
Chronic disease and conditions related to an unhealthy lifestyle have reached epidemic proportions and are rising still. This presents a momentous challenge for the current healthcare system. Looking at the problem from a design perspective shows that there are many gaps in the way that current approaches relate to people’s daily lives and motivations. Designing from the individual’s point of view could provide the key to solutions that work. Working with partners in Bolton and Kent over the six months from December 2004, the Design Council explored ways to create new healthcare systems. The design team prototyped innovative services for self-managing chronic conditions and maintaining healthier lifestyles. These point towards a radical new model of healthcare organisation: Open Health. Summary page - Movie (8.8 mb, 9 minutes) - Open Health report (pdf, 600 kb, 64 pages) Kent: Activmobs (download design notes, pdf, 4.9 mb, 41 pages) Bolton: The Diabetes Agenda (download design notes, pdf, 3.6 mb, 41 pages) Co-design Co-creation |
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21 February 2006
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When six-year-old Tilly Griffiths from Staffordshire wanted to join her elder sister’s ballet class, her parents turned for help to a little known charity that designs and manufactures one-off pieces of equipment for disabled people.
Based in an old chapel just outside Watford in Hertfordshire, Demand (short for Design and Manufacture for Disability) was set up by Lady Renton in 1980 after she was unable to find a chair in which her disabled daughter could sit comfortably. Read full story [BBC News] Laptop computers that combine features from popular toys with innovative technology have rapidly accelerated the learning and communication ability of disabled children, Penn State researchers say. The technology could in the future be adapted to victims of major accidents and the elderly as well. Read full story [Science Daily] Kids’ favorite purple dinosaur, Barney, or that cute, fuzzy red ‘monster’ from Sesame Street, Elmo, want all kids to be able to play with them. Some kids, however, may not be able to play with them because of physical limitations or other disabilities. But now, because of RePlay for Kids, a nonprofit organization in which engineering students and staff from Case Western Reserve University donate their time and expertise to repair and modify toys for children with disabilities, every child can play with their favorite toy. Read full story [Science Daily] |
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23 January 2006
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A new look at what makes up accessibility.
“Did you know that up to 25% of all visitors on your website have some kind of accessibility problem. Some of your users may be blind, deaf, dyslectic, has learning disabilities or motoric disabilities such as schlerosis, parkinson’s disease, etc. A so-called functional disability. But how about users with a technical disability: Wireless devices, slow internet connections, old browsers, feed readers, etc. These should be considered as well, as there are probably more people with technological disability than functional disability. 25% of all web users have some kind of accessibility problem. That is a claim from the Danish Center for Accesibility.” (via Usability in the News) |
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6 January 2006
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Inclusive design is about ensuring that environments, products, services and interfaces work for people of all ages and abilities. Many people are interested in this, but there is no ready source of information, methods, tools and examples to help them achieve it. This website aims to plug that gap by bringing together new and existing information and making it accessible via a single user-friendly interface.
The website is aimed at design students and their tutors, professional designers, design managers and policy makers. It has been developed to introduce newcomers to key concepts, examples and design/research methods, and to support practitioners in gathering together relevant information to build up their own collection of tools and techniques. |
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17 October 2005
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Experientia takes part in an international creativity workshop on “toys for children’s rehabilitation” in Yerevan, Armenia.
The symposium, workshop and exhibition, which will take place from 20 November to 3 December, is a joined organisation of Studio-College of the National Aesthetics Center, the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute (OSI), World Vision Armenia, Fördern durch Spielmittel – Spielzeug für behinderte Kinder e.V. (Toys for Children’s Rehabilitation) and UNESCO Armenia. During two weeks participants in collaboration with specialists, including Experientia’s partner Jan-Christoph Zoels, will be involved in various activities together with children with special needs in different childcare facilities to develop completely new toys for therapy and rehabilitation of these children. The results of the first Armenian creativity workshop will be shown in a public exhibition. After the exhibition, an interdisciplinary group chooses the most interesting toys. Selecting criteria are therapeutic aspects and innovative character. These toys will then be modified, copied and tested for three months by children with and without special needs. The organisers will arrange further development of toys and publish a book containing instructions to make toys on one’s own. Invitation letter (pdf, 304 kb) |
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27 August 2005
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My Experientia business partner Jan-Christoph Zoels alerted me to a series of New York Times articles on the isolated, frightening, overwhelming and often dehumanising experiences many patients have in hospitals, and what social, cultural and demographic changes are playing a factor in this.
Awash in information, patients face a lonely, uncertain road (14 August 2005 - Permanent link) Patients turn to advocates, support groups and e-mail, too (14 August 2005) In the hospital, a degrading shift from person to patient (16 August 2005 - Permanent link) Essential but uncommon knowledge: Patients have many rights. Just ask. (16 August 2005) Sick and scared, and waiting, waiting, waiting (20 August 2005 - Permanent link) Alone in Illness, Seeking Steady Arm to Lean On (26 August 2005 - Permanent link) Where to Get Help in Planning for Illness (26 August 2005) Related: IDEO’s design cure – [Metropolis, October 2002] (pdf, 828 kb) |