"If We Had the Information That We Need to Interpret the World Around Us, We Wouldn't Be Disabled:" Barriers and Opportunities in Information Work among Blind and Sighted Colleagues
Yichun Zhao, Miguel A. Nacenta, Mahadeo A. Sukhai, Sowmya Somanath
TLDR
This paper identifies challenges and workarounds for blind and sighted colleagues using information representations in diverse teams, offering insights for better design.
Key contributions
- Examines how mixed-ability teams (blind/sighted) use information representations collaboratively.
- Identifies four types of failures and workarounds in information representation use.
- Reveals how workplace stigmas and social dynamics shape interdependent information work.
- Offers a conceptual understanding to improve design for mixed-ability knowledge work teams.
Why it matters
This research provides crucial insights into the challenges faced by blind and low-vision employees in collaborative information work. By understanding these barriers and workarounds, designers and organizations can create more inclusive tools and environments, fostering truly diverse and effective knowledge work teams.
Original Abstract
Despite recognition of the value of diversity, the way work takes place can fail to support blind or low-vision employees, especially in collaborative work settings. This paper examines how professional teams with diverse visual abilities use information representations (e.g., PDF documents, spreadsheets and charts). A diary study with follow-up individual interviews (23 participants with mixed abilities from 5 teams) and 2 separate focus groups (7 participants from 2 other teams) allowed us to characterize key dimensions of the role of representations in the workplace into four types of interrelated failures and workarounds, influenced by workplace stigmas and shaped by evolving social dynamics towards interdependent information work. We contribute this new empirically supported conceptual understanding of representation use in workplaces that can help design and improve the experiences of mixed-ability teams doing knowledge work in the current technological landscape.
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