research-article

Investigating Information Search by People with Cognitive Disabilities

Authors:

Jinjuan Heidi FengAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), Volume 7, Issue 1

Article No.: 1, Pages 1 - 30

https://doi.org/10.1145/2729981

Published: 01 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The ability to gather information online has become increasingly important in the past decades. Previous research suggests that people with cognitive disabilities experience challenges when finding information on websites. Although a number of studies examined the impact of various design guidelines on information search by people with cognitive disabilities, our knowledge in this topic remains limited. To date, no study has been conducted to examine how people with cognitive disabilities navigate in different content structures. We completed an empirical study to investigate the impact of different search methods and content structures on the search behavior of people with cognitive disabilities. 23 participants with various cognitive disabilities completed 15 information search tasks under three conditions: browsing a website with a deep structure (4 × 4 × 4 × 4), browsing a website with a broad structure (16 × 16), and searching through a search engine. The results suggest that the participants overwhelmingly preferred the search engine method to the two browsing conditions. The broad structure resulted in significantly higher failure rates than the search engine condition and the deep structure condition. The causes of failed search tasks were analyzed in detail. Participants frequently visited incorrect categories in both the deep structure and the broad structure conditions. However, it was more difficult to recover from incorrect categories on the lower-level pages in the broad structure than in the deep structure. Under the search engine condition, failed tasks were mainly caused by difficulty in selecting the correct link from the returned list, misspellings, and difficulty in generating appropriate search keywords.

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Cited By

Lee HXie I(2025)Disability, Accessibility, and Universal DesignEncyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship, and Information Science10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5(511-518)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5
Roomkham SSitbon L(2024)Restarting the conversation about conversational search: exploring new possibilities for multimodal and collaborative systems with people with intellectual disabilityProceedings of the 2024 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3627508.3638339(231-242)Online publication date: 10-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627508.3638339
Kong HYadav SLowy RRuzinov DKim J(2024)Understanding Online Job and Housing Search Practices of Neurodiverse Young Adults to Support Their IndependenceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642578(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642578
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Investigating Information Search by People with Cognitive Disabilities
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Assistive technologies
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing Volume 7, Issue 1

June 2015

77 pages

ISSN:1936-7228

EISSN:1936-7236

DOI:10.1145/2786939

Editors:
Matt Huenerfauth
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
,
Kathleen F. McCoy
University of Delaware, USA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 June 2015

Accepted: 01 January 2015

Revised: 01 January 2015

Received: 01 January 2014

Published in TACCESS Volume 7, Issue 1

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https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95689-5.00139-5
Roomkham SSitbon L(2024)Restarting the conversation about conversational search: exploring new possibilities for multimodal and collaborative systems with people with intellectual disabilityProceedings of the 2024 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3627508.3638339(231-242)Online publication date: 10-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627508.3638339
Kong HYadav SLowy RRuzinov DKim J(2024)Understanding Online Job and Housing Search Practices of Neurodiverse Young Adults to Support Their IndependenceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642578(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642578
Heuer HGlassman E(2023)Accessible Text Tools: Where They Are Needed & What They Should Look LikeExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585749(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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Dixon EAnderson JBlackwelder DL. Radnofsky MLazar A(2022)Barriers to Online Dementia Information and MitigationProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517554(1-14)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
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Roomkham STerris SSitbon L(2022)Multi-modal Conversational Search for People with Intellectual Disability: An Exploratory StudyExtended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491101.3519821(1-6)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022
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Borina MKalister EOrehovački T(2022)Web Accessibility for People with Cognitive Disabilities: A Systematic Literature Review from 2015 to 2021HCI International 2022 – Late Breaking Papers: HCI for Health, Well-being, Universal Access and Healthy Aging10.1007/978-3-031-17902-0_19(261-276)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2022
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