Accessibility in context: understanding the truly mobile experience of smartphone users with motor impairments

Lab-based studies on touchscreen use by people with motor impairments have identified both positive and negative impacts on accessibility. Little work, however, has moved beyond the lab to investigate the truly mobile experiences of users with motor impairments. We conducted two studies to investigate how smartphones are being used on a daily basis, what activities they enable, and what contextual challenges users are encountering. The first study was a small online survey with 16 respondents. The second study was much more in depth, including an initial interview, two weeks of diary entries, and a 3-hour contextual session that included neighborhood activities. Four expert smartphone users participated in the second study and we used a case study approach for analysis. Our findings highlight the ways in which smartphones are enabling everyday activities for people with motor impairments, particularly in overcoming physical accessibility challenges in the real world and supporting writing and reading. We also identified important situational impairments, such as the inability to retrieve the phone while in transit, and confirmed many lab-based findings in the real-world setting. We present design implications and directions for future work.