Doing User Research with blind Persons - An Interview with Nathalie Kuhn

In this interview I talk to researcher Nathalie Kuhn about blind people and user experience research. As always, all inaccuracies and typos are mine.

DO: Welcome to a new podcast on digital accessibility. Today I have another guest with me, namely Nathalie Kuhn, who wrote a thesis, a master's thesis, on the topic of blindness and user experience, which I found very interesting, and that's why I invited her for an interview. First of all, thank you for taking the time for the podcast today. Maybe you just generally introduce yourself to the audience, Ms. Kuhn.

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Ms Kuhn's background

NK: Yes, very much. So yes, as I already said, my name is Natalie Kuhn, I studied media informatics for a bachelor's and master's degree and yes, as I just said, I wrote my master's thesis on the subject of user experience and accessibility. And after completing my bachelor's degree, I started working at the university in Cologne, at the Gummersbach campus, where I also worked in the area of human-computer interaction. So as the name suggests, the communication between people and technology and this is also where the area of user experience, i.e. user-friendliness, is located. And that's what I deal with for the most part, so a lot of my teaching involves helping students, supporting them, teaching them new topics. But also try to make progress in research and work in the area of user experience.

Blindness in the user experience

DO: Yes, thank you very much. How did you specifically come to the topic of blindness and user experience?

NK: Because I work in this area anyway and wanted to deal with it in my master's thesis in order to of course make a little progress in research. And then I first looked for current topics in the area of user experience and the topic of accessibility particularly caught my eye. I have also seen that this topic in particular is being discussed in great detail, but there is actually not that much information, which is something I discovered during my research. And then I found this topic quite interesting and wanted to devote myself to it.

DO: User experience has many research methods, including practical user experience research in general. What methods did you then choose for your work?

NK: Several, so. First and foremost, I did a detailed literature research because I had little experience with accessibility and I also focused specifically on visual impairment and blindness. I don't have anyone I know who is affected. That's why I had to work my way into it a bit. I took a look at what diseases there are that can lead to visual impairment or blindness. What restrictions you then have to deal with, because sometimes with visual impairment you may still have tunnel vision, so you may have to consider other restrictions. I also took color blindness into account because I also noticed that there are still a lot of barriers on websites, especially when it comes to colors and contrasts.

I also looked into the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which provide guidelines for making websites or apps accessible.And to support this research, I interviewed people who have visual impairments or blindness and I found them by looking for Facebook groups and actively writing to people there or also have forums on the Internet that deal a lot with this Address the issue of accessibility. And I then asked these people, among other things, what restrictions they had to live with. So in relation to websites, what barriers they come across there from time to time and I've already tried to find out what these people want.

I specifically focused on online shops, what they (blind and visually impaired people) need to cope better.

And then I dedicated myself to an analysis and concentrated on the Otto website. This is a company that actually sells quite a few products. And I specifically chose this website because many people said in the interview that they like to use it because of these different options. And then I found out that this page in particular was not yet very accessible, which I then had to discover through a Google Lighthouse scan, which helps to see how the accessibility is. And that only resulted in a score of 69. 100 is the highest score. And that shows you that this site still needs to be made accessible and that there is still a lot to do. And I used this scan.

Then I did another scan, just to check whether the same barriers could be found or perhaps others. But I actually just tried out speech output myself, from the Mac and actually went through the website myself using different key combinations to see whether these scans really found everything or whether I discovered something myself can. I then noted these barriers and tried to improve this page based on the suggested solutions from my interview partners, but also from research. So I tackled these different barriers and then tried to circumvent or solve these barriers either in code or design technology.

DO: Did you do it as a structured questionnaire or did you interview people verbally, so to speak?

NK: The questionnaire was semi-structured, so I met with the people via Zoom because it was also because of Corona and the person came from a little further away. And I wrote down a few questions myself, simply so that I have orientation and don't forget anything important. But the interviewees always had the opportunity to bring in new ideas, which I found very helpful because you might not always cover everything or think of everything.

DO: Were there any findings in your work that surprised you? You probably expected some insights from your research, but were there things that were new to you too?

NK: So yes, I definitely found it very surprising how many people with visual impairments or blindness actually use online shops and how many benefits that can actually have. So I knew that there were still gaps in the topic of accessibility in online shops, but I was still surprised at how incomplete these scans [meaning the automatic accessibility testing tools] still were, because I was partly familiar with these scans I went through the website and it said: All images are labeled. But then I did. I went through the page with voice output and then, for example, some images were simply said to me as an alternative text image, which doesn't say much about the respective image.

This means that very few people are actually aware that you shouldn't just rely on these scans, but that you should definitely also include the user group, or maybe even take a look yourself with a screen reader or something similar for barriers can be uncovered. So there is definitely still a lot of need that needs to be met. And I was very surprised that this was actually put so far behind, because the topic of accessibility is, in itself, nothing new.

Tips for User Research

DO: Absolutely. My next question would have 2 parts, and I would be interested in one. What tips would you give other researchers if they also wanted to work with blind and visually impaired people?

NK: Actually, what I just said, definitely include the user group. So if, for example, you are developing a completely new website, for example you want to make it accessible. Personally, I always think it's great to have people on hand who have visual impairments or blindness. Like me, you can find them on Facebook, in forums or something similar. I also noticed that many people are very happy to help. And that would be what I would say, that they should definitely be included. So of course the scans are also good, you can of course use them, but I think that because they can't reveal everything, I think it would be important to also have people with visual impairment or blindness questioned, included and the whole time out. Their perspective, so to speak.

DO: Do you have any special tips for people who do UX research not academically but in business?

NK: No, in theory I would actually say exactly the same thing. So research also helps a lot, because during my research I also saw that there are already a few studies that deal with this. But in these studies you always find a couple. Gaps that could not yet be solved. For certain reasons. And I think only the user group can help, because they can express their wishes or their expectations of a certain product. So yes, I would say exactly the same thing.

DO: Exactly the final question, you are still working at the university, I think you also said in the introduction, what topics are you currently working on?

NK: Well, as I said, I'm mainly in the area of human computer interaction and therefore also have UX design and the topic of accessibility is actually now becoming more and more important at our university on the Gummersbach campus, I'll say. And I am currently supervising 3 groups of students who are dealing with the topic of accessibility and designing and implementing various applications that can make the lives of people with disabilities easier. Two groups also focus on visual impairment and blindness. And one group actually tries to take other disabilities into account, such as people who have hearing problems or are actually completely deaf. Language. I would have loved to have taken cognitive disabilities and the like into account in my master's thesis, which is of course also very important, but that would have gone a bit beyond the scope.

DO: Yes, super exciting. To be honest, I didn't even realize that there was so much going on at universities about accessibility; you don't always notice that from the outside. But yeah, I think it's great. Thank you very much for taking the time for the interview. And we definitely keep our fingers crossed that the research projects continue to go well.

More Infos and Download of the German language master thesis

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