Applications on mobile phones are offering a new service quality for eGovernment applications. We discuss the development of access to electronic time table displays as an example for the difficulties of inclusive design. The mAIS system provides personalized presentation of such information on a mobile phone. It has been implemented in two iterations each followed by evaluation in a field study with more than 55 people having a large variety of specific and contradictory needs. The user-centered design process terminated successfully and usability has been confirmed for looking up time-table information remotely or locally by each user group. However, inclusive design requires a better understanding of the communication needs when design new applications.
INTRODUCTION Mobile phones are more and more accepted by people who rely on assistive technology. For example, blind people install a screenreader and gain access to applications using the GUI offered by Symbian operating system, similar to people with low vision who would install a screen magnifier but perceive as little as what is spoken out through speech synthesis or presented on a mobile Braille display. Hearing impaired people may avoid interferences with modern hearing aids when calling and some deaf people like the use of SMS for exchange of text messages. People relying on a wheelchair use it also to carry a mobile phone and gain some more independence. Moreover, mobile phones are more and more common among elderly people for similar reasons. Each of these groups uses public transportation often since driving a car is experienced as challenging if not impossible.
Some public transportation operators offer web-based access to real-time time table information, even suitable for mobile phones, but there are several limitations when trying to use browsers as a user interface. The identification of bus stops and trains station requires some expertise typically not available to the less frequent traveler. Route planning is not accomplished beforehand but adapted on the fly under real-time conditions depending on the available connections, other interests such as shopping and knowledge about transportation modes. It appears, quick lookup of time table information provide those displays found at bus stops and train station platforms and positioned at a considerable height to secure them from vandalism.
Such electronic time table displays are largely inaccessible to blind or visually impaired people. In addition, information is not listed about lowered floors allowing access by wheelchair to a vehicle. Commonly only numbers and final destinations are listed, adding little to improve orientation for all people.
Very common are SMS based services to look up the time
table for some bus stop. They require learning to apply the
syntax for a query, read the bus stop number posted
somewhere, and interpret the response, which may be
overwhelming for busy places. We found no train operator
offering a SMS-based service, probably for this reason.
LOCATION-BASED LOOK-UP
The mAIS system consists of Bluetooth beacons mounted
at bus stops to identify them appropriately [
Evaluation The system personalizes the time table data. It takes multiple user profile into account and uses speech synthesis, provides color contrast and enhances the presentation. Users have confirmed this adaptability in field trials.
Initially there was no remote query planned. After the first trail most users have noted absence of such a feature. As the developers were themselves using public transportation not often and where well mobile, this major design flaw was only discovered in the field study.
Table 1 shows how the mAIS was used after the second
trial. Remote requests were issued by all type of users.
Discussion
The mAIS system aims at one task: look-up data on
electronic displays for public transportation. We have
applied user-centered design and based the design on two
user surveys [
In particular in the early phases of design, which typically consist of mock-ups, it was difficult to include end users, as mock-up techniques for mobile phones could not be applied. In particular we found it very difficult to understand the type of accessibility problems we could encounter in mobile phone applications without implementing a sample application. Many participants had used mobile phones not as rich client but just for SMS and phone calls, thus had no experience relevant to our questions.
When designing for many types of users a more economic approach is needed. More indicators have to be developed in order to understand if each user group has to participate in parallel or if some user groups represent also others. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank all participants and in particular Jan Winters and Ursula Weber for conducting the field study within project mAIS. The project was funded by the European Union and the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Mobile phones were made available by Motorola, Flensburg and German Telekom provided free phone services for all field trials.
Mobility Impaired 40 min in advance 20min in advance 10min in advance 3min in advance 2 15 3 0 0 6 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 7 16 8 2 7 10 5 11 11 10 3 2 3 0 0 1 0 0 1 1