Re: involving end-users (was Re: [urgent] input from WAI Coordination Group on mobile accessibility pre-cal)

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:43:31 +0100, Yeliz Yesilada <yyeliz@metu.edu.tr>  
wrote:

> Hi Shadi, All,
>
> On 11 Mar 2012, at 14:04, Shadi Abou-Zahra wrote:
>
>> I think the term "end users" is a little vague and jargony but may be  
>> useful to consider at this stage.
>>
>>
>>> I am not sure about this. If people just start to talk about their  
>>> experiences, the webinar will have a different focus. I though the  
>>> overall idea is presenting "research" results. Therefore, there could  
>>> be papers that talk about user studies where users are disabled web  
>>> users. However, I do not see how end users or people with disabilities  
>>> will directly write a short abstract to present their experiences. To  
>>> me that is something completely different. There can be webinars that  
>>> end users get together to discuss their experiences but that is not a  
>>> *research* webinar :-s
>>
>> Why shouldn't we invite the people for whom we are doing research for,  
>> to better understand the real challenges? Why can't this be scientific  
>> research if we set it up correctly?
>
> End users can be invited to attend the webinar, I think there is no  
> problem with that. However, if they will be invited to submit abstracts  
> then that will change the focus of the webinar. In my opinion, talking  
> about personal experiences is not research. There might be research  
> papers/abstracts that present findings of user studies though.

End users are capable of doing research, based on their experience, and  
presenting it as such. We have a program committee precisely to weed out  
things that don't match our goals, so I am not too concerned about getting  
the odd thing in that we then say "sorry, this isn't actually th direction  
we were looking for, next time we'll try to be clearer in our CfP".

That said, I don't think it makes sense to say who we are inviting papers  
from, beyond "people with an interest in the problem who have something to  
contribute".

In my understanding, WAI works specifically on accessibility for people  
with disabilities. Stuff that is incidental to that - e.g. happens to  
serve people whose network connection is terrible (me, quite often), or  
have old devices (again, me) - is relevant to our mission precisely in so  
far as it touches on accessibility for people with disabilities.

In summary, I am fine with the first set of proposed changes, think the  
second set should instead be to strip out all the 'types of people', and  
the third doesn't matter enough for me to have a useful opinion one way or  
the other.

cheers

-- 
Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
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Received on Monday, 12 March 2012 12:16:59 UTC