Identifying design-for-all constraints in upcoming interaction technologies

This paper describes a project funded by the Commission of the European Communities (EC) and the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and carried out by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in the form of a Specialist Task Force (STF). The starting point of the project is the observation that new information and communication technologies (ICT) are often introduced without taking into account the requirements of elderly and/or disabled users, resulting in products and services that are hardly usable by those users. STF 377 on "Inclusive eServices for all: Optimizing the accessibility and use of upcoming user interaction technology" develops a roadmap of forthcoming user-interaction technologies with a scope of ten years and aims to identify relevant user requirements from an accessibility viewpoint as well as corresponding usability solutions. The project results will, therefore, allow stakeholders in different stages of the research and development lifecycle (researchers, designers, developers, etc.) of services and devices to spot potential difficulties in the design of service user interfaces which could cause elderly or disabled users to experience usability issues, and solutions that rectify those shortcomings will be proposed. At the time of writing, first results are available. However, any comments and contributions can still be considered for inclusion in the final deliverable.