User Perceptions and Preferences for Online Surveys in American Sign Language: An Exploratory Study
Rachel Boll, Shruti Mahajan, Tish Burke, Khulood Alkhudaidi, Brittany Henriques, Isabelle Cordova, Zoey Walker, Erin T. Solovey, Jeanne Reis · 2023 · Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) · doi:10.1145/3597638.3608444
Summary
This paper presents SL-Surveys, an interactive prototype survey tool designed from the ground up for American Sign Language (ASL) rather than retrofitting text-based survey platforms with ASL video content. The research team, which included Deaf ASL-signing researchers, linguists, and UX experts from the ASL Education Center and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, recognized that existing approaches to ASL surveys have consistently produced unsatisfying results. Previous attempts to bolt ASL videos onto platforms like Qualtrics resulted in clunky, non-intuitive interfaces with misaligned layouts, confusing navigation, and poor integration of video content. SL-Surveys took a fundamentally different approach: designing survey question types entirely in ASL without any reliance on English text. The prototype explored five designs across three common question types — two multiple choice (MCQ), two scalar (SQ), and one multi-select (MSQ) — each varying systematically across design elements including video shape (rectangular, circular, rounded-corner), video borders for indicating selections, freeze frames as thumbnail labels, hover-to-play interaction, click-to-select responses, screen orientation (portrait vs. landscape), video positioning, and white space. All survey content was developed and signed by native Deaf ASL signers, with questions drafted originally in ASL rather than translated from English. The prototype was built in Adobe XD and tested on desktop/laptop computers.
Key findings
A think-aloud study with seven Deaf ASL-fluent adult participants revealed several striking design preferences and usability patterns. Most remarkably, six of seven participants were able to intuitively grasp and begin interacting with the multiple choice and scalar question designs without any instructions, despite having never encountered an ASL-only survey interface before. Freeze frames — static images showing an ASL sign at a recognizable moment — emerged as a powerful innovation: six of seven participants noticed and used them to scan, identify, and select answer choices, sometimes without watching the full video. All seven participants strongly disliked rectangular video shapes, describing them as "rigid," "eye-fatiguing," and "not engaging," while preferring circular and rounded-corner shapes. For selection indicators, participants universally preferred a full border around the entire video frame over a partial border on one edge, finding the latter too subtle. Six of seven preferred hover-to-play over click-to-play for video playback. Six participants preferred portrait layout (question on top, answers below) for multiple choice, while all seven preferred landscape layout for scalar questions. The multi-select question type proved most challenging — all seven participants needed prompting to understand its purpose, indicating a need for clearer visual cues or instructions for this question type. Participants identified immediate applications in education, medical and legal settings, and workplaces.
Relevance
This study challenges the common assumption that making surveys accessible to Deaf signers simply means adding ASL video to existing text-based tools. The finding that purpose-built ASL-centric interfaces were largely intuitive even on first exposure suggests that the usability problems plaguing retrofitted ASL surveys stem from design conflicts, not from inherent complexity. For accessibility practitioners, the specific design preferences uncovered — rounded video shapes over rectangles, full borders over partial ones, freeze frames as scanning aids, hover-to-play interaction — provide concrete guidance for any interface presenting signed language video content, not just surveys. The broader implication is significant: as signed languages are visual rather than text-based, design standards and conventions developed for written language interfaces may actively hinder usability for Deaf users. The work points toward a future where ASL-centric design principles are established as their own standard, rather than adaptations of print-based norms.
Tags: deaf and hard of hearing · American Sign Language · survey design · user experience · ASL-centric design · video interface · accessibility research methods · participatory design
Standards referenced: WCAG