Universal Usability of Dynamic Content

Marguerite Bergel and Ann Chadwick-Dias, Fidelity Investments

Understanding how to make dynamic content usable and accessible is a challenge that extends beyond traditional interaction design. When content dynamically changes on a page, particularly a complex page, all users run the risk of not noticing the change. This is especially true for screen magnifier users who work with a very high level of magnification, and screen reader users, who can only have focus in one place at a time. Further, even fully sighted users often fail to notice when subtle changes occur on the page.

This presentation will address two actual design challenges that we faced in our business with dynamic content along with our user-tested solutions, which were sometimes not ideal given the project constraints. We will solicit active audience participation around best practices and potential solutions. The presentation will include video clips of users and demos of issues using assistive technologies.

About Marguerite Bergel

Marguerite Bergel is a Senior User Experience/Accessibility Analyst at Fidelity Investments where she is part of Fidelity eBusiness Design’s User Experience team. She has presented on topics related to universal usability at numerous conferences including UPA, Aging by Design, SIGCHI, HCII, Boston IA, Boston UPA, and CSUN and has numerous publications in the field. She has also been involved with Fidelity’s open source research.

About Ann Chadwick-Dias

Ann Chadwick-Dias is a Principal User Experience/Accessibility Analyst at Fidelity Investments where she is part of Fidelity eBusiness Design’s User Experience team. She has presented on topics related to universal usability at numerous conferences including UPA, CHI, CUU, Aging by Design, Boston IA, Boston UPA, HCII, and CSUN. She has more than 10 years of research experience with journal publications in several fields, including human-computer interaction, psychobiology, and psycholinguistics.