RE: W3C WAI EOWG meeting, 1-2 November 2010, Lyon, France

There is time Shawn, but it is a chicken and egg thing.

I am required to first get ethics approval from my uni. This is done at one of two levels. If I can argue that the involvement of the seniors will put them at minimal risk, then it is handled quickly, within a fortnight, at the School Ethics Committee level. However, if they think that participants will be exposed to more than minimal risk, then it goes to the uni level committee, which only meets once each month. One thing that would put it beyond the minimal risk level, is if I were to involve participants with cognitive disabilities, because it would raise questions about their capacity to give informed consent. I said chicken and egg, because for the ethics application I have to detail what will be done. Therefore the test WAI-AGE website has to be chosen prior to the ethics application, so that I can build it into the script of what will be carried out with the participants. I cannot add it in afterwards.

The two links you sent are both descriptions of what to do. I suppose, instead, what I think would be good is if you know of a site that has already implemented many of the guidelines. I could then script a scenario or two that involves participants using that site. The scenarios could, largely without the participants knowing this, involve them using the new access features. Even better would be if the site were under your control, because in that case, in addition to monitoring performance at my end, you could gather stats at your end about what was accessed, etc.

The grant targets seniors in the 40% of rural households in New South Wales, who have not used the Internet, and about whom there is concern that they may become socially isolated. The idea is to introduce them to the Internet and through it, to social networking. I will be introducing them to GreyPath, an online community for seniors. But before doing so, I need to teach them to use the Internet and email - actually I won't personally conduct any training. That will be done by a retired computer teacher, because studies have shown that seniors prefer to learn from other seniors. Therefore, before introducing them to GreyPath, I could use the WAI-AGE test site, as a means of teaching Internet use.

Below are a couple of samples of the types of participants I stated in the grant, that I am targeting. For example, because households are a focus, I will be training couples, not individuals:

A 71 year old Currawarna farmer and his 64 year old wife. They live on their farm, which is on the market, and intend to retire to Wagga Wagga, upon its sale. The farmer has no computer knowledge, but is interested in learning. His wife has only used a computer for the farm finances, and has not used the Internet.

A 66 year old Uranquinty farmer and his 65 year old wife. They live in their farm-house, but the farm is leased to someone else. She has worked as a book-keeper, although not recently, and has therefore used computers. He is interested, but has no experience with computers. He wants to be able to use computers to communicate with his daughters and their children; one daughter is in the USA and the other in country Victoria.

Cheers, Oliver

________________________________________
From: Shawn Henry [shawn@w3.org]
Sent: Wednesday, 13 October 2010 11:56 PM
To: Burmeister, Oliver
Subject: Re: W3C WAI EOWG meeting, 1-2 November 2010, Lyon, France

Hi Oliver,

Thank you for the offer!

What are the dates for this?

Do you have any more parameters or specific ideas?

Off the top of my head, a couple of web pages that we are working on that are specifically for this user group are:
* Better Web Browsing: Tips for Customizing Your Computer http://www.w3.org/WAI/users/browsing
* Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites http://www.w3.org/WAI/users/inaccessible

I'll think on this and ask around and get back to you if we have more ideas...

~Shawn



On 10/13/2010 12:57 AM, Burmeister, Oliver wrote:
> Hi Shawn
>
> I have just has a small grant awarded to train rural seniors in Internet use, using Apple iPads. In the application I argued for the use of the iPads, because of the various in-built accessibility features it has. It would therefore not be much of a stretch to incorporate some testing that might assist EOWG and/or WAI-AGE. For example, as part of the Internet training, I could use a test site, if you have one? The training will take place in our usability lab, so I will be able to monitor/measure performance. Let me know if this might help.
>
> Cheers, Oliver
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-wai-age-request@w3.org [mailto:public-wai-age-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Shawn Henry
> Sent: Wednesday, 13 October 2010 3:07 AM
> To: WAI Interest Group
> Cc: EOWG (E-mail); WAI-AGE Taskforce
> Subject: W3C WAI EOWG meeting, 1-2 November 2010, Lyon, France
>
> We are specifically looking for web accessibility advocates, developers, trainers, educators, evaluators, researchers, and editors to help EOWG with:
> * testing with assistive technologies and adaptive strategies
>

Received on Wednesday, 13 October 2010 20:10:34 UTC