Avaliação de usabilidade de comando ocular de cadeira de rodas motorizada

Abstract

Due to high rates of people with disabilities in Brazil, the demand for Assistive Technologies (ATs) in many fields has increased. However, some studies report that 30% of all purchased devices are abandoned. Some reasons, as lack of user involvement in the technology development, lack of training and changes in users' needs are mentioned. This research was focused on understand and how users and developers relate to ATs, identifying the priorities of each group and verifying if this divergence reflects in dropout rates. A command system for an electric-powered wheelchair using eye movement was developed for a public with severe physical disabilities, and a usability evaluation of this technology was performed. Through empirical evaluation methods (with users from the target group) and analytical methods (without the participation of the target group), many interface problems were found on the developed system, in which users found twelve problems, and developers, ten. To perform the heuristic evaluation (analytical method) few parameters for a complete evaluation was perceived. Thus, 25 heuristics were proposed to perform the evaluation. The selection of those heuristics had different weights for users and developers, judging on the degree of importance of each item for each group, and a divergence in prioritizing the 16 criteria (pvalue <0,05) was noticed, which indicates a difference in the way in which both groups relate to AT. Because of this difference in user and developer standpoint, it was concluded that it is important to consider the opinion of both groups and other professionals in the development of ATs to ensure that these comply with the expectations of all involved.