Action item from Mary Jo

 the review of the graded help and included my questions and comments below. 
 
 Review of issue paper on Graded Help: 
· Progressive disclosure: Product designers typically use techniques such as progressive disclosure of help where a simple message is given, and if more understanding is needed, links or buttons can be activated to reveal more detailed information and suggestions on how to fix problems.   I think that this approach can be leveraged for people with cognitive disabilities and is missing from the proposal. I’m sure there’s been user research on its effectiveness for the average user, but has there been any research for people with cognitive disabilities?
 · Help locations: Would a consistent location to obtain help be best?  Is there any research in this area?  E.g. help icon next to an input field vs. help in the top menu vs. help in a side panel vs. contextual help through a keyboard hotkey or context menu. We know F1 exists to obtain help in native applications, but in Web F1 is taken by the browser – is that confusing to people with cognitive disabilities?
 · Mobile platform: How should help be best presented in the mobile environment?  Any different requirements or techniques in this space?
 · Iconography: Would a consistent icon to indicate help is available be desired? Are there certain colors that might be best for a help icon?  E.g. White question mark icon on blue background in the shape of a circle vs. white ‘i’ for ‘information’ on a blue background vs. a button with the word ‘help’ vs. a combination of the word and ‘?’ or ‘i’?   If live help is available for the user to request, what is the best way to communicate that?  I did a search on help icons and there is a great deal of variance in the presentation for both obtaining help from a person and simply the way to obtain textual help.  How well do these icons globalize? 
 Comments on Graded Help paper: · Challenges for People with Cognitive disabilities:  o May have difficulty knowing the right vocabulary for help search terms.  
 o Search terms have to be spelled correctly to be found
 o Help may not be easy to understand, using terms and vocabulary unfamiliar to the user · Types of Language support o There are checkers for certain grade levels of reading. Is it helpful to ensure the content isn’t beyond a certain grade level, or to have content modified to not exceed a certain grade level? · Usage: o On the literal language only bullet I suggest adding some examples of what to avoid: e.g. idioms, colloquialisms, contractions · Types of symbols and pictures o Last bullet - Not sure what kind of content you’d really wish to hide if it doesn’t have symbol or picture support. E.g. not all fields in a form will necessarily have help available, but it may be that all of the fields in the form are be required to complete it – you wouldn’t want to hide anything there. It would be nice to have some examples of how hiding content would be useful, where it would be appropriate. · Help: o First bullet “I want tooltips”, would need some alternative means of displaying in mobile environment.  Settings: · Perhaps a setting to provide word prediction from a thesaurus of terms used in the help could be helpful in searching for the right help Provide a setting to have search that allows for misspellings, gives choices of terms spelled nearly the same. Best regards, 
Mary Jo 
    
     Mary Jo Mueller
 Accessibility Standards Program Manager
 IBM Accessibility, IBM Research, Austin, TX
 Phone: 512-286-9698 | Tie-line: 363-9698 
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 "lisa.seeman" ---09/24/2015 12:16:14 PM---Hi Mary JoIs there any progress on your action item? All the best
 
 From: "lisa.seeman" <lisa.seeman@zoho.com>
 To: Mary Jo Mueller/Austin/IBM@IBMUS
 Date: 09/24/2015 12:16 PM
 Subject: Action item
 

 
 
 Hi Mary Jo
 Is there any progress on your action item?
 
 All the best
 
 Lisa Seeman
 
 Athena ICT Accessibility Projects 
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