How to Make Qualitative Research Accessible to People with Disabilities

I've gone over why we should be making research accessible to people with disabilities from a legal and business standpoint, understanding the types of disabilities, and the basic etiquette for interacting with people who have disabilities.

Now let's talk about qualitative research, and all qualitative research projects start with recruiting.

Recruiting

You can work with your usual recruiting partners, but often they are not prepared to handle a request to incorporate people with disabilities expressly. Recruiters who specialize in people with disabilities may be unprepared or unwilling to do a partial recruit to include a few people with disabilities into a study. You can also try partnering with a service or advocacy group, but they usually prefer maintaining ongoing relationships rather than one-off projects. While there are no perfect answers right now, if we keep pushing for these services in our regular recruiting requests, it will become easier over time.

When I was regularly recruiting people with disabilities for usability testing at a telecommunications company, it was a learning process. When I started, the recruiter sent me people with disabilities, but their disabilities didn't necessarily affect their ability to use or comprehend the digital products we were testing. Eventually, I learned to use the following three questions in my screeners:

1. Would you describe yourself as a person with a disability?

   • Yes

   • No

2. If yes, how do you define your disability?

   • [open end]

3. Does your disability affect your ability to do any of the following activities?

   • Going from place to place

   • Reading a book

   • Using the Internet

   • Communicating directly with others

   • Completing household chores

   • Using a smartphone app

   • Taking part in civic activities

If they said yes to question 1 and either ‘Using the Internet’ or ‘Using a smartphone app’ to question 3, they would qualify for my study because their disability affects their ability to use the product we were testing. You may have different qualification criteria for your project.

I would also include detailed instructions on how to join the session remotely and reach me if they had any problems. If the session were in-person, I would have added further details on getting to the facility. Including:

• The nearest parking for people with disabilities

• Nearby public transit options

• The location of accessible entrances and elevators

• How to get the accessible washroom

• What to expect during the session

• An offer to receive feedback to make the session easier for them to participate

If you can provide your participation instructions in written, audio, and visual formats, that's great. People are usually able to process at least one of those three formats.

Online Qualitative Research

Our research methods and practices should be accessible to people with disabilities online. An excellent place to start is by asking our research platform providers if they are WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 compliant.

What You Can Do to Ensure WCAG Compliance

It's not always up to the software and web platforms to be compliant. You can also do your part.

• Make sure your color contrasts are strong enough to tell the difference between text, links, and buttons by using an online color contrast analysis tool.

• White space is great, but people using magnifying functions can get lost if there is too much of it.

• Error messages make it clear how you expect people to format the answers to the questions, and they should be above the question and answer so screen readers will see them as related.

  • Think about when you entered a faulty piece of information while you're trying to buy something online. A sound system will tell you what when wrong and tell you where and how to fix the error.

•  Make online navigation and participant instructions as explicit as possible.

• Use words with pictures and pictures with words for people who may perceive one, but not the other.

You can ask your participant what aids they use for their computer and navigating the web and see if those devices are compatible with the platform you are using. If they are not, try to find a workaround or an alternative to the platform you've chosen.

In-Person Qualitative Research

When booking a facility to conduct in-person research, carefully verify their accessibility. People mean well, but often don't know if their facility is fully accessible. Check:

• Will the room and hallways accommodate wheelchairs?

• Are there automatic doors and elevators, and are they easily accessible?

• Will the bathroom accommodate a wheelchair, and can they get to it?

• Are the tables high enough? Are they height adjustable?

• Where are the nearest public transit stops and parking spots for people with disabilities?

Because it will be more difficult for someone with a disability to come to you, expect to pay a higher incentive.

Of course, all of this can be avoided by offering to do the session remotely or offering to go to their home or other location of their choice. That will make everything much more straightforward.

Next up - how to do accessible quantitative research.