Help-Seeking

The deliberate process of asking for, searching for, or otherwise obtaining assistance to complete a task, learn a feature, or resolve a breakdown. In accessibility contexts, help-seeking is often shaped by inaccessible documentation, visually oriented tutorials, and the cost of context-sharing: screen reader users typically have to extract and rewrite screen content into text before a sighted assistant or chatbot can respond usefully. Research on help-seeking in accessible computing has shown that disabled users employ distinctive strategies (detailed task descriptions, SR traces, accessibility-specific forums) and that on-demand, context-aware AI assistants can substantially lower the cost and raise the quality of help.