"Accessibility Scene" in China

I've been doing a paper for the Special Issue on Accessibility and Technical Communication of the Usability Special Interest Group of the Society for Technical Communication with my friend Eleanor and Sean.

Accessibility along with usability is becoming more and more aware nowadays. However, not enough research report showing its status in China. Eleanor, Sean and me want to bring the latest review of it in China. Therefore, technical communicators in both the west and the east will be able to take away some useful information regarding techniques and approaches that they will be able to apply in their own web work and consider using inclusive and universal design.

Statistics from China Disabled Person’s Federation (CDPF) show that there are 60 million disabled people in China, among which visually impaired are 14.6% -- 8.8 million. There are also a numbers of disability related web sites in China including those that target at a visually impaired audience. We are going to present our research on the main difficulties of blind students in China in their need to be literate and how computer technology has provided a breakthrough with the Chinese language.

Although information accessibility in China is still in its fledgling stage, research have been taken in developing products like screen readers, Chinese-Braille/Braille-Chinese translators, etc. Computer technology is making more and more of an important impact on many lives of people with disabilities and working styles. However, despite the proliferation of those software programs, the additional problem of them is that Chinese language has different dialects, such as Mandarin in Beijing and Cantonese in Guangzhou. We are also planning to distribute a questionnaire to some of the schools for the blind in the Hilton/Perkins Program in order to get the first hand information of blind users’ experience of using assistive technology software to access the computer documents and the web.

This paper will also be in conjuncture with projects for the uiGarden web magazine to disseminate information on the importance of universal design to Chinese usability specialists, web designers and technical communicators, so that they are aware of people with disabilities using the computer and Internet with text readers. Difficulties in practice lie in the dialect differences in China and that there is no current specific legislation. Our findings might question W3C standards that are mainly directed to those who use European /western languages – should the same standards apply here in China?

The Launch of uiGarden

After eight months hard work, with firm and persistent conviction, heartfelt passion and generous support from friends, the first issue of uiGarden, - the bilingual webzine dedicated for professionals in the UI and usability related field is finally published.

In the first issue, we bring out articles in English and Chinese by six top scholars: including Don Norman, Alan Dix, Scott Jesson and Nico MacDonald and Lin Qin (the president of the newest founded UPA China branch) and ISAR UI design Ltd. (the first UI design company in China), showing their views and practices of the interface design industry.

At the same time, there are so many others who have made this project possible. I want to start by thanking our adviser: Ann Light, who guided me through the whole process of the project; Patrick Shine from the BBC, who gave me great advice and support on every aspect, especially on the information architecture of the site. You two have set the stage for the achievement of this project .

For the success of this project, I particularly want to thank Nico MacDonald for the cooperation with usabilitynews.com; Martin Maguire from HUSAT Research Institute and Russell Beale from Birmingham University for getting student volunteers for me. Also many thanks to Eleanor Lisney for her English editing and Sean Liu for the translations. Du Juan (cuckoo), thank you for the logo and icon design. Thank you also Mori, Steven Liu and Ryana Chan. Without everybody, this web site would not have been possible.

I also want to thank all the people who have shown great interests in this project.

Last but not least, special thanks to Pat Jordan for your encouragement and suggestions during the the development of the uiGarden.

I hope every visitor will enjoy their tour of this site and will come back again.