ISCRAM 2020 Workshop
User Diversity -- A Hands-on Guide to Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management

Understanding the challenges of digital solutions in emergency management for diverse users and situations through hands-on experiences.

INTRODUCTION

The main purpose of this workshop is to increase the knowledge of universal design in the ISCRAM community and to provide practical information that is useful for participants in different roles, including researchers, decision makers and first responders.

Disaster resilience depends on all users, including the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as people affected by situational disabilities triggered by the disaster, being able to achieve situational awareness through well-designed ICT tools. A focus on usability and universal design in ICT for Emergency Management can make a big contribution towards disaster resilience for all.

All ICT tools being used in emergency management should be accessible and easy to use, which can be achieved through carefully following the principles of universal design, i.e. ensuring that the ICT tools are usable by diverse users, including the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as people affected by situational disabilities.

While Usability and Universal Design of ICT in Emergency Management is becoming an important emerging area of research within the ISCRAM community with the related special track, there is also a need for practical hands-on guidance on how to ensure universal design in practice. This workshop intends to fill this gap by providing practical information that is suitable for participants at all levels of previous knowledge on the topic.

Learning outcomes:

• How to take into account situational disabilities
• Built-in assistive technology in different operating systems
• How to make requirements that include diverse users

WORKSHOP TOPICS

• Introduction to User Diversity
• Digital Barriers and their Potential Impact
• Situational Disabilities in Disaster Situations
• Universal Design Guidelines – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), etc
• Assistive technologies
• User centered design
• User testing

TENTATIVE WORKSHOP PLAN

The workshop will take 4 hours in total, with an introduction followed by hands-on sessions, a practical guide to design for diversity, and a summary/discussion.

• Introduction (1h)*
• Explaining the basic concepts and relevant methods
• Hands-on session 1 (1h)
• Participants trying out selected apps with built-in assistive technology in mobile devices
• Summary and discussion for mobile
• Break
• Hands-on session 2 (1h)
• Participants trying out web applications with built-in assistive technology in laptops
• Summary and discussion for laptop
• Design for diversity, group work and experience elicitation* (40 min)
• Summary and discussion* (20 min)

*We may collect information from the participants on a voluntary basis:

1. pre-workshop survey, to gather background (before or at the beginning of the workshop)
2. post-workshop survey, to gather feedback (after or at the end of the workshop)
3. group work results, to give input to research (during activity "group work")

This is for the purposes of adapting the workshop to the audience, for being able to create an even more relevant workshop next year, and for challenging and validating our research in this area.

No personally identifiable information will be collected.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

This workshop supplements the Usability and Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management track that was first successfully run at ISCRAM 2018 in Rochester, NY, USA, again at ISCRAM 2019 in Valencia, Spain, and now at ISCRAM 2020.

Prof. Weiqin Chen is Professor at department of computer science at Oslo Metropolitan University and leader of the research group for Universal Design of ICT. She was co-chair of the tracks on Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management at ISCRAM 2018 and 2019. She has many years of teaching and research experiences in human computer interaction, assistive technology, and universal design of ICT. She has organized and chaired a number of conferences, workshops, special sessions/tracks, panels, and other academic events, including executive chairs for ICCE 2015-16, workshop chairs for LA 2014-7, EP4LA series, Doctoral Student Consortium chairs and co-chairs for ICCHP2018 and ICCE2011-14, 18-19, local organization committee for Design Education 2012.

Dr. Terje Gjøsæter is Associate Professor at Oslo Metropolitan University and active member of the research group for Universal Design of ICT. He has chaired tracks on Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management at ISCRAM 2018, 2019 and 2020, and has also organized and chaired a track on Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management at HCII2019. He has previous experience from co-organizing and co-chairing a Workshop on Web Accessibility and Metamodelling in Grimstad, Norway in 2005, with 15 participants and 5 poster presentations, and participants and invited speakers from Italy, Egypt and Germany as well as Norway. He also co-edited the proceedings from the workshop containing peer reviewed abstracts published by University of Agder (previously Agder University College). He was Session Chair for a parallel session at MODELSWARD 2016 and was a member of the program committee of NISK2017. Together with co-chair Weiqin Chen and Jaziar Radianti, he has published several papers on various aspects of Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management and Disaster Resilience.