Improving Usability of Web Pages for Hard-of-Hearing Persons: An Investigation of the Utility of Pictograms

This paper reports two experiments conducted to investigate the utility of pictograms for improving usability of web pages for hard-of-hearing persons. The first experiment simulated a directory-based information search task, typically carried out at portal sites, to understand how the task is performed when directories are represented in text form. Sixteen hard-ofhearing and sixteen hearing participants were asked to select one or more directories out of twenty-seven directories for each of the thirty-eight queries. The result demonstrated that the hard-of-hearing participants performed less efficiently than the hearing participants probably due to less elaborated understanding of the meaning of directories represented in text form. The second experiment examined whether hard-of-hearing persons could derive intended meanings of pictograms better than hearing persons by having the participants perform a directory–pictogram name-paring task. The result indicated that the hard-of-hearing participants answered more correctly than the hearing participants, suggesting the possibility of using pictograms as alternatives for text for improving web usability for hard-of-hearing persons.