UNIVERSAL USABILITY

SUBMMITED BY

R.VEERAPPAN
18352056
OVERVIEW
• What is Universal Usability ?
• Importance of Universal Usability
• What is Usability ?
• What is Universal Design ?
• Applications of Universal Design
• Challenges in Universal Usability
• Principles of Universal Usability
• Examples of Universal Usability
• References
 WHAT IS UNIVERSAL USABILITY
• Defines universal usability as “enabling all citizens to succeed using
communication and information technology in their tasks.” Notice he does not
say, “enabling all citizens to use”, but rather, “enabling all citizens
to succeed”—quite a call to arms! Designers who practice universal usability
strive for designs that gracefully accommodate a diversity of user needs and
circumstances.
IMPORTANCE OF UNIVERSAL
USABILITY
• The goal of universal usability is to enable the widest possible range of
users to benefit from information and communications services.
• This goal is stronger than merely providing access, which focuses on
technology availability and is often tied to access for users with disabilities.
 WHAT IS USABILITY ?

Usability is a simple concept, yet so powerful that it can derail even the most
amazing product concepts and sleekest of designs if it’s not implemented well.
Put very simply, usability is the ease with which a person can accomplish a given
task with your product. 
Usability is how easily a person can accomplish a given task with your
product; it is the result of intentional, research-based, and user-tested design
decisions made with one goal in mind: to make it as easy as possible for users to
do what they need to do with the product. 
WHAT IS UNIVERSAL DESIGN
• Universal Design is an approach to design that increases the potential for developing a
better quality of life for a wide range of individuals. It is a design process that enables and
empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness,
and social participation.
• It creates products, systems, and environments to be as usable as possible by as many
people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation. Other terms for Universal Design
used around the world include Design for All, Inclusive Design, and Barrier-Free Design.
• Universal Design terminology and meanings differ from one country to another and often
reflect each nation’s societal values. Cultural differences influence how the movement has
been adopted in different countries. However, the common goal of social inclusion
transcends national laws, policies, and practices.
 APPLICATIONS OF UNIVERSAL DESIGN
User Design can be applied to any product or environment, such as curricula, career
services offices, multimedia, tutoring and learning centers, conference exhibits,
museums, microwave ovens, recreational areas, homes, computer labs, worksites, and
web pages.
• User Design in Education
• User Design of Instruction
• User Design of Software
• User Design of Student Services
• User Design of Professional Organizations, Projects, Conference Exhibits, and
Presentations
• User Design of Physical Spaces
CHALLENGES IN UNIVERSAL USABILITY
• Supporting a broad range of hardware, software, and network access. With the advance of ICT,
users' hardware, software, and network configurations are changing. The variety of ICT products
creates complex systems with a broad range of hybridity.
• Accommodating individual differences among users, such as age, gender, disabilities, literacy,
culture, income, and so forth. Individual differences can be roughly categorized into three types:
physical, cognitive, and socio-cultural.
• Bridging the knowledge gap between what users know and what they need to know about a
specific system.
Two issues need to be resolved:
(i) Building a user model to access individual user's background knowledge on a specific
system.
(ii) Integrating the mechanism of evolutionary learning.
PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL USABILITY
• Design simply:
Design simple sites, emphasizing important elements and using simple
structures and clean, standards-based markup.
• Build well:
Take full advantage of these inherent properties, such as fallbacks,
flexibility, and user control, to construct universally usable Web sites.
• Favor HTML over other formats:
HTML is the best format for universal usability. Provide documents in
nonstandard formats, such as PDF and Flash, only as an alternative to accessible
html.
EXAMPLES OF UNIVERSAL USABILITY
• Computer systems allowing the interchangeable use of several input devices.
e.g. track ball, mouse keyboard, joy stick or laser pointer.
• Computer keyboard that accommodate the physical differences between user.
e.g. distance between keys, size of keys, and required pressure.
• Websites that provide both multimedia version (for high bandwidth users)
and text-only version (for low bandwidth users).
REFERENCES
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_usability
• https://www.washington.edu
• https://www.wqusability.com