Usability evaluation of the South African National Accessibility Portal interactive voice response system

Abstract

One of the most prominent problems that persons with disabilities face in South Africa, is access to relevant disability related information. To address this need the South African National Accessibility Portal (NAP Portal) was developed, that enable people with disabilities to easily get access to information. However, most people in South Africa do not have access to adequate Internet facilities. To overcome this obstacle, an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) engine was connected to the NAP Portal, which allows access to information through a telephony interface. The IVR engine and scripts guide the user through information categories on the portal to the desired information, which is then voiced out to the user. In this paper, the researchers present the evaluation of the IVR system to determine how easy or difficult users experience the whole process of retrieving information via a telephone. A usability evaluation was performed on the current NAP IVR system. Furthermore, a heuristic evaluation was done on a new design of the NAP IVR system to determine whether the major problems, that were highlighted by an expert, are addressed in the new design. Inputs from both of these evaluations will be used to design the next version of the NAP IVR system.