Disability and Usability Testing in Technical Communication

By Deja Jackson| No STC Membership Level

Accessibility, technology, and disabilities in the field of technical communication is something that is
talked about a lot but research is showing that not a lot is being done to make technical documentation
accessible to those with disabilities. It has been noted by researchers that usability and disability is an
opportunity for technical communication to explore and because of this, more research needs to be
done in terms of what usability is, how usability testing can be beneficial to everyone, and how usability
affects people with disabilities.

Usability in Technical Communication

Since around the 1970s, usability and technical communication have been a thing. Even so, there is not
a lot of research or literature reviews that help the field of technical communication under the need of
usability. Usability is a main concern in technical communication that it matters a great deal when
technical communicators are working on websites, documents, etc. There has been research done to
understand the goals of technical communication in conjunction with usability, as well as how usability
testing can be used in design to promote social justice and user empowerment. In terms of the goals of
usability, usability needs to meet the end users’ needs and that includes but is not limited to their
environment and culture. The pragmatic goals of usability include learnability, efficiency, memorability,
error recovery, utility, and time.

Usability can be defined many different ways but one definition from the Nielson Group defines usability
as a quality attribute that asses how easy user interfaces are to use.” Taking this definition of usability, it
can be safe to say that this will be helpful for technical communicators to incorporate these ideals into
their work to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities. This definition has also received a lot of
attention from disability scholars starting that there is not enough usability testing including people of
disabilities. In order for everything to work together, people with disabilities need to be included.
Usability refers to their users’ experience, as well as testing and feedback from the users. [See Figure 1-
Caption: Usability Definitions throughout history, starting with 1989 and ending in 2017.]
Researchers have found that when it comes to usability, user-centered design was something that technical
communicators should take into account. User-centered design would ensure that technical communicators would
come together with the user, in this case, people with disabilities, to create a product, document, etc. With having
a user-centered design, it is important to include everyone because, this way, all problems can be assessed
through usability testing. Disability studies can be combines with technical communication and usability in the
classroom through Zdenek’si
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See
Zdenek, S. 2020. "Transforming Access and Inclusing in Composition Studies and Technical Communication." National
Council of Teachers of English 536-544.