Discovering the value of access needs research
Discovering the value of access needs research
Posted by:
Aspasia Dellaporta and Chris Lansley, Posted on: 13 January 2017
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Categories:
Accessibility, Service design, User research
Chris has worked in UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI) since 2003. Aspasia, a user researcher working on visa applications, invited Chris to observe a research session. Together they went to visit John, who has a degenerative eye condition that’s left him with only 5% sight in each eye.
Chris has seen many visa application forms in his time – some of them more than 70 pages long – but this was the first time he’d observed a visually-impaired user interact with a digital service and he was astonished.
Here is Chris’ account of the session.
Testing the service with a screen reader and voice recognition user
When I first encountered the new service, I was struck by how much simpler and more intuitive it was compared with what had gone before. There were still odd niggles and quirks, but I felt it was user-friendly and would make life easier for those applying.
I observed John using an impressive [...]