M1 - Specialist needs for HCI

Task: M1 - Explain how an HCI could be adjusted for specialist needs.

Specialist:

Accessibility and specialist requirements: this is here to make sure that the interface is friendly towards people with specialist needs, allows them to operate it easily as any other human would be able. Things like, having a colour-blind mode for the visually impaired, having a speech and audio interaction, allowing for text enlargement so that people can read and see images easily. Other things like, having extra ports for peripherals to be plugged in, e.g. a mouse and/or keyboard.

Voice recognition can be very helpful for people will disabilities when on a HCI. Voice recognition works by transferring all the words that you say into text on whatever machine you may be on. For example, my phone has this feature on it. I use this feature when I go out running, as I can change to a different song without having to stop and change it by hand. This feature can be used to capture a conversation and transfer it into text. This would be good for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

When it comes down to people who have a visual impairment of some kind, having the option to increase the text size (zoom in), is incredibly important. This means that they don’t have to strain their eyes to see something. An example of this would be my grandparents, they use the iPad for reading the news, etc. without the option to zoom in, they would find it very hard to read the text. Having a good contrast between colours is also a very important. If you have white text on a yellow background, for example, it would be very hard for most people to read.

Having text-to-voice can also be very helpful for people who have a speech impediment. Being able to type and play the sentences can be a major help for anyone, not just disables users. For example, if you went abroad, you could write out a sentence I your own language, then play it back, but translated in a different language.

Its small things like this that the designers all need to take into account when creating a HCI product, or any kind of product to tell the truth. It will help out so many people in so many different ways, not only that, it will widen the target audience for your product meaning that more people will buy it.