Consumer Focus Groups

To learn about the experiences of persons with disabilities using public information and communications technologies (PICTs) and their feelings about accessing PICTs with wireless devices like cell phones and portable computing devices, Dis-IT held two focus group meetings in Vancouver. One meeting was for persons with visual impairments, the other for persons with significant upper body mobility impairments, the two user groups regarded as experiencing the greatest barriers to accessing current PICTs. A total of 16 persons (nine men, seven women) attended these meetings.

The purpose of the meetings was to determine:

• which activities in their daily living they wanted to access with PICTs
• what challenges of barriers they experience with current PICTs
• what wireless technology they could imagine using to access PICTs

To familiarize the focus group participants with the potential of wireless access to PICTs, they were shown a seven minute video created by students at Simon Fraser University’s Information Technology and Interactive Arts Program.

The video portrayed potential future applications of wireless technology at various locations in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, including a Skytrain public transit station, a bank, a shopping mall, and a post-secondary institution. Animations were used to depict portable devices that could be developed to wirelessly interact with bank machines, point-of-sale terminals and other PICTs. A script providing additional description was created for use in the focus group of people with visual impairments.

The services the focus group participants accessed most frequently were:

1. transportation
2. retail
3. banking

When asked, however, which services they accessed electronically most frequently, the top three were:

1. retail
2. restaurants
3. banking

All the focus group participants said that they experienced challenges accessing retail and public service technologies and felt that accessing them wirelessly would be an improvement. While all participants experienced many of the same challenges accessing PICTs, participants with visual impairments and participants with upper body mobility impairments identified different priorities.

• Persons with visual impairments highlighted macro issues such as getting to a particular destination (e.g., way-finding, accessing public transportation, navigating) as their major concern and one they would like the technology to address.
• Participants with upper mobility impairments also often have difficulty getting to PICTs, but identified the micro issues of operating PICTs (e.g., inserting cards, using a keyboard, retrieving receipts) as their greater challenge.

Compared to the current methods of accessing PICTs, there was a general consensus that it would be very appealing to use a cell phone or other portable wireless device to access a variety of PICTs. People with upper-body mobility impairments said they would also like to use wireless devices to open doors, operate elevators and anything that requires manual input (e.g., pushing buttons). People with visual impairments said they would most like to use wireless devices for navigation (e.g. finding streets, transit stops, buildings, etc.)

When asked if they anticipated any barriers or downsides to using wireless technology to access retail and public service technologies, most participants identified some privacy/security issues. These concerns included personal security (i.e., people being able to see or hear their personal information, or stealing the wireless device from them) as well as cyber security (i.e. hackers intercepting wireless transmissions of their password or other personal information).