A Tool for Capturing Essential Preferences
Dana Ayotte, Michelle Brennan, Nancy Frishberg, Cynthia Jimes, Lisa Petrides, Whitney Quesenbery, Madeleine Rothberg, Rich Schwerdtfeger, Jim Tobias, Jutta Treviranus, Shari Trewin, Gregg C. Vanderheiden · 2016 · Proceedings of the 18th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '16) · doi:10.1145/2982142.2982155
Summary
This demonstration paper presents the First Discovery Tool, a multimodal web-based application designed to help people discover and set essential accessibility preferences — such as large fonts, high contrast, speech output, or one-handed keyboard use — to address major technology access barriers. The tool is part of the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) initiative, which aims to provide automatic adaptation of any device based on user preferences. The key challenge is that discovering and activating accessibility settings is difficult even for experienced technology users, and many people are unaware that helpful options exist. The First Discovery Tool makes minimal assumptions about a new user's abilities: they may not be able to see, hear, use a mouse, or read. It is designed for both tablet and desktop use, presenting a two-panel interface — one for adjusting a preference and another showing a live preview of the effect. Earlier testing without previews found that users could not understand what effect settings would have on their content. The tool covers software-configurable preferences only; specialized hardware (e.g., eye-tracking systems) would require professional assessment. Primary use cases include educational settings (e.g., a 16-year-old student with an arm injury accessing a learning management system) and senior settings (e.g., an 86-year-old retired teacher whose daughter helps her set up large icons and easier keyboard settings).
Key findings
Testing in educational and senior settings found that most participants understood the preferences offered, and some discovered helpful options they were previously unaware of. The tool represents one component in a larger series of preference tools within GPII designed to progressively adapt systems and content to best fit each user. The design addresses a bootstrapping problem in accessibility: a person who needs accessibility features to use a device must first be able to navigate that device's standard settings interface without those features active. By making the preference discovery process itself accessible and multimodal from the start, the tool overcomes this barrier. Other anticipated deployment scenarios include voting systems and public kiosks.
Relevance
This work addresses a fundamental paradox in digital accessibility: the people who most need accessibility settings are often the least able to find and configure them using standard interfaces. The First Discovery Tool tackles this through a combination of multimodal presentation, live previews, and minimal assumptions about user abilities. For accessibility practitioners, the key insight is that preference discoverability is itself an accessibility problem — even well-implemented accessibility features are useless if users cannot find them, as demonstrated by research showing widespread lack of awareness of available options (echoing findings from Szpiro et al.'s low vision study at the same conference). The GPII framework's vision of preferences that follow users across devices — rather than requiring configuration on each new device — addresses the recurring frustration of having to re-establish accessibility settings. The tool's emphasis on supporting people with limited technology experience or confidence connects directly to the digital literacy challenges documented in research on older adult technology adoption.
Tags: personalization · accessibility tools · aging · education · inclusive design · digital literacy · user interface design · universal design