6. USER PROFILE CHARACTERISTICS
The sample was made up of 20 sighted and 20 visually impaired people and was gathered partly on a voluntary basis and partly on a selection basis: sighted users included staff and students from the Department of Information and Communications and library staff from Manchester Metropolitan University. Visually impaired users were contacted via organisations such as the National Library for the Blind, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, Action for Blind People and Vision First, as well as some public library Visual Impairment Units. A selection criterion was set to ensure that all the users included in each sample were at least familiar with the Internet and with basic searching or browsing of sites.
Participants ranged in age from under 21 to over 50 years old. The visually impaired sample included three users who were in the range 21-30, eight users were 31-40, four were 41-50 and five users were over 50. The sighted sample included three users who were under 21, ten users were 21-30, three were 31-40, two 41-50 and two users were over 50. A graphical depiction of the age range of users in both samples is given in Appendix Two.
Of the twenty sighted users, thirteen said they used a PC every day and four every other day (one user said he/she used a PC every working day, i.e. week days and one every other working day). One user used a PC once or twice a week and one user used a PC once or twice a month. The most popular location of access was at work (seven users) or college/university (four users). Home was also cited as a location of access (one user). Nine users cited a combination of home, work or college/university.
Of the twenty visually impaired users, 10 said they used a PC every day, three every other day, six once or twice a week and one user said he/she used a PC once or twice a month. The most popular location of access to a computer was at home or at work (six said at home, one and work and six both at home and work). The local library, college and university were also cited, as were local societies such as Action for Blind People.
Ten of the visually impaired users had no vision at all or very little (i.e. a small degree of light perception); nine had some vision ranging from degenerative conditions to involuntary eye movements and one user could see print but needed access technology to be able to interpret it. Eye conditions mentioned included: retinitis pigmentosa; nystagmus; optic atrophy; high degree myopia; macular degeneration and cataracts. The majority of the visually impaired users in the sample needed assistive technology to be able to read a standard size screen. Assistive technologies included screen readers (the majority using speech output systems, with one using a talking web browser), electronic Braille bars, screen magnification and combinations of screen magnification and screen reading. One of the users could look at a standard (14" or 15") size screen, but needed to use a screen reader because dyslexia prevented him/her from interpreting the text. Others needed to be extremely close up to the standard screen to be able to read it, often with some difficulty as they would not be able to interpret a whole screen displaying different frames with different functions.
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