Web contents design and evaluation by considering image-language processing characteristics of hard-of-hearing persons

在2006年，我们进行了一项实验来比较不同的目录表示，以提高网站的可用性。该实验模拟了一个基于目录的信息搜索任务，以了解当目录以文本、标记象形图或未标记象形图表示时是如何执行的。21名听力障碍者熟练处理象形文字，21名听力障碍者熟练处理文字；我们被要求为38个从容易到困难的查询中的每一个，从27个目录中选择一个，以三种可选格式中的一种表示。结果表明，为困难的查询选择目录比为简单的查询选择目录花费更多的时间，并且当目录以标记象形图表示时花费的时间最少。此外，由每个参与者组选择的目录的可变性程度在困难查询中比在简单查询中更大，并且随着格式变得更加文本化，听力组的目录可变性程度单调下降。然而，听力障碍组的听力水平大致保持在同一水平。2007年，我们对上述实验中收集的眼动数据进行了进一步的分析。我们发现，只有在标记象形文字条件下，听力组和听力障碍组在注视次数和注视时间方面表现相同。我们得出结论，标记象形符号表示比文本表示具有优势。这意味着当目录由文本和象形图表示时，参与者收集了最有效地选择目录所需的信息。我们建议网站设计师应该使用标记象形图来实现基于目录的网站的测试和易于导航。

In 2006, we conducted an experiment to compare alternative representations of directories for improving usability of web sites. The experiment simulated a directory-based information search task to understand how it is performed when directories are represented in text, labeled pictograms, or unlabeled pictograms. Twenty-one hard-of-hearing, who were skilled at processing pictograms, and 21 hearing participants, skilled at processing text; were asked to select one of 27 directories represented in one of the three alternative formats for each of 38 queries ranging from easy to difficult. The result demonstrated that it took more time to select a directory for the difficult queries than for the easy queries and that it took the least time when the directories were represented in labeled pictograms. In addition, the degree of variability in directories selected by each of the participant groups was greater for the difficult queries than for the easy queries and decreased monotonically for the hearing group as the format became more textual. However, it stayed approximately at the same level for the hard-of-hearing group.In 2007, we carried out further analysis on eye movement data that were collected in the above-mentioned experiment. We found that only in the labeled-pictogram condition, the hearing group and the hard-of-hearing group performed equally well in terms of the number of fixations and the fixation times. We conclude that labeled-pictogram representation has advantage over text representation. This implies that the participants gathered information necessary to select a directory most efficiently when the directories were represented by text and pictograms. We suggest that web site designers should use labeled-pictogram to achieve fest and easy navigability of directory-based web sites.