### Nathalie PICAN, Usability specialist

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### France Telecom Research & Development

***Human Interfaces Division (DIH)***

***Laboratory of Quality of Service Evaluation and customer
acceptability (EQS)***

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FTR&D / DIH / EQS

4 rue du Clos Courtel BP 59

35512 Cesson Sevigne, FRANCE

Phone : +33 2 99 12 47 66

nathalie.pican@Francetelecom.com

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**UPA 2001 / Position paper for Workshop N° 6**

# Exploring Measurement and Evaluation Methods for Accessibility

**Activity context**

France Telecom, the largest Telecommunication Company in France, wants
to allow people to communicate wherever, whenever and with whoever they
want; this means: easing everyone's communication, whether they are
handicapped or not, whether in a working situation or that of daily
life.

Under this framework, different research projects have been launched to
explore the possibilities offered by new communication technologies in
terms of ergonomic and technical adaptation and of analysing the uses by
people said to be "handicapped"; more specifically, it is about:

-   Deepening our knowledge on less fortunate people and their
    relationships with the rest of society.

-   Easing access to communication tools, for handicapped people.

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-   Easing interaction between handicapped and non-handicapped people
    through use of new communication tools,

-   Easing interaction between the handicapped and the rest of the
    environment by new communication tools.

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-   Deepening our knowledge on different types of interaction (haptic,
    audio, visual...)

All of these objectives decline along with the considered deficiency
(visual deficiency -- blindness or pore sight; audio deficiency -- deaf
or hard of hearing; other handicaps...).

Our lab E.Q.S, *Quality of Service Evaluation and customer
acceptability*, deals with evaluation of perceived quality of
telecommunication products and services. Different skills are grouped in
this lab: psychophysics (for voice, audio and picture quality
assessment), psychology and human factors (for usability evaluation),
computer science (as support for automatic tools design and
development), Marketing. Evaluation operations may bring one or several
of twenty different methods that can be grouped in three main
categories: field studies, lab tests and automatic measures of media
quality.

Under France Telecom's work for the handicapped, our laboratory has
taken charge of several tasks. I personally am responsible for work
carried out on the development of measurements and adapted *Quality of
Service Evaluation and customer acceptability* methods. On the other
hand, in the past I have carried out numerous pieces of work in the
handicap domain. This is why I am very interested in participating in
workshop 6.

##### Current work in the handicap domain 

-   *Testing the image quality around auditory deficiencies*

Under the framework of developing the videoconference service, this is
about determining the best image quality (frequency, size of the
window...) to allow people with hearing difficulties to dialogue using
sign language.

-   *Adaptation of evaluation methods for telecommunication products and
    services*

> The objective is to systematically integrate users with sensory
> (visual or audio) deficiencies and to make these services available
> for usability tests carried out by France Telecom.

-   *Participation in the development of a tool evaluating the
    accessibility of Web sites written in Braille.*

This tool, developed in collaboration with the INSERM, allows us not
only to find the obstacles of a site so that it can be consulted via a
non-visual Braille interface, but also gives the developer a means to
remedy such problems (ergonomic recommendations, rules defined by the
WAI...).

##### Previous work in the handicap domain

-   *Independent consultation in the handicap sector*

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-   Intervention in projects to conceive dedicated interfaces and/or
    those accessible to handicapped people.

-   Adaptation of businesses' work stations for physically handicapped
    people and in employment centres for mentally handicapped people.

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-   *Doctorate research on the ergonomy of non-visual interfaces*

Work to take into account the disparity of a visual handicap and
bringing new information technologies into the conception of adapted
human-computer interfaces (cf. publications below).

**[Publication]{.underline}**

Burger D., Pican N. , Felix Y. & Bouraoui A. (1996), *L'apport possible
des nouvelles technologies pour l'étude active de documents,* In : Actes
du colloque INSERM-ANPEA, Les nouvelles technologies dans l'éducation
des handicapés visuels, 10-11 juin, Paris.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1995), *Utilisation combinée du geste, de la
parole et du toucher dans une interface pour aveugles,* In : Actes du
XXXième congrès de la SELF, Biarritz.

Pican N. (1995),*Du braille papier au braille éphémère : l'adaptation
des stratégies,* Journée ERGO-IDF, 16 mai , C.N.A.M., Paris.

Burger D. & Pican N. (1995), *Rendre les interfaces graphiques
accessibles aux déficients visuels,* In : Safran & Assimacopoulos (Ed.),
Le déficit visuel. De la neurophysiologie à la pratique de la
réadaptation, Edition Masson, Paris.

Bellik Y., Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), *Méditor, un prototype
d'interface multimodale pour la manipulation de textes
braille enrichis,* In : Acte du séminaire INSERM-ANPEA, Interfaces
multimodales pour handicapés visuels, Paris.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), *Poste de travail informatique et handicap
visuel,* In : Actes du colloque de l'Institut National des
Télécommunications, Les technologies de l'information dans le domaine de
la santé : Quels produits et services pour demain ?, Evry.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), *Human factors in the evaluation of a
computer interface for the blind *In : Actes du congrès WWDU'94, Milan.

Pican N. & Burger D. (1994), *Spécificité de la conception d'interfaces
pour handicapés visuels,* In : Actes du XXIXième congrès de la SELF,
Ergonomie et Ingénierie, Paris.