Hello! Researchers at the University of Victoria, Department of Computer Science are conducting research to evaluate an interactive system designed by us to improve diagram accessibility for people with vision loss.

If you meet the following criteria, we would love to hear and learn from you!

  1. Consider yourself to be blind, visually impaired, or partially sighted;
  2. Rely on the auditory channel, or auditory combined with other sensory channels to access information from a computer;
  3. Have experience using touch-screen devices;
  4. Have an age of more than 18 years;
  5. Reside in Victoria, Vancouver, Fraser Valley, or Kelowna BC, Canada.

The study will take one hour and take place in the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) offices in Victoria, Vancouver, Fraser Valley, and Kelowna, or in our research laboratory on campus at the University of Victoria. During the study, you will be asked to participate in a system evaluation session which will be centred around evaluating the effectiveness of our designed prototype based on what we have learnt from the previous study to assess to what degree the needs of individuals who have vision loss are met.

Insights gained from this study session with you will help us broaden access to diagrammatic information for people who may be otherwise left out or limited from the types of information they can readily access due to the constraints of how current technologies are designed (i.e., high reliance on visual channels of access). The result of this study will help assess the design of our computational prototype to address diagram accessibility issues for people with vision loss.

The study session will last 1 hour and as a thank you for your time we will provide an Amazon gift card of $30 CAD.

This project is titled "Improving Diagram Accessibility for People with Vision Loss", and the researcher conducting this study is Yichun Zhao, an MSc student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria. This study is taking place under the supervision of Dr. Miguel Nacenta and Dr. Sowmya Somanath. The University of Victoria research ethics number for this study is 23-0110.

If you have any questions or would like to participate in this study, please contact me directly via email at yichunzhao@uvic.ca (yichunzhao@uvic.ca) or via phone at 236-882-5592. We strongly recommend you to contact us as soon as possible because it takes time to manage the logistics and scheduling with CNIB offices.

Thank you,
Yichun Zhao