Blind User Requirements Engineering for Mobile Services Simeon Hebler Pentasys AG Rüdesheimer Straße 9 München, Germany + 49 89 5 79 520 mail@simeon.de Tuure Tuunanen The U. of Auckland Private bag 92019 Auckland, New Zealand +64 9 373 7599 tuure@tuunanen.fi Ken Peffers U. of Nevada, Las Vegas Box 456034 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA +1 702 895 3796 k@peffers.com Abstract This paper presents the design of blind user requirements engineering (BURE). It extends wide audience requirements engineering (WARE), a method for data collection, analysis, and presentation of system requirements for users; who are widely dispersed and may have little connection to the organization or technology and little motivation to participate in requirements engineering efforts; to accommodate blind users. We extended WARE data collection and analysis techniques to accommodate blind users’ limitations in the use of textual and visual media. We demonstrate use of BURE in an RE effort among users in New Zealand and Germany to develop requirements for mobile service applications and features for blind users and validate its use in a follow-up survey among such users. Keywords: Requirements elicitation, blind user requirements engineering, wide audience. 1. Introduction There are approximately 161 million people in the world who are vision impaired, according to the World Health Organization, including 37 million who are blind (Wikimedia 2007). Furthermore, the number of blind people in the world is increasing, largely because of increased life expectancy and age-related causes for blindness, such as cataracts and macular degeneration. Clearly, there is a need to insure that information systems are designed to be accessible and usable for this very large population of users and potential users. Furthermore, we all as users have difficulty in relating what we want from information systems (Sutton 2000). Blind people have special requirements when accessing information systems. Computers and mobile devices are, first and foremost, visual media. Hence, special arrangements are required to make the technology accessible. This requires consideration of appropriate input and output mechanisms on the hardware side and a usable representation of information for applications and content. Traditionally, user interfaces have been designed to accommodate the information presentation on visual displays. For example, Internet sites have been built based on table layouts with menu items as graphical buttons. Early on, there was little consideration of how alternative input or output mechanisms could effectively process information for the blind. In recent years, however, voluntary and legislated efforts have begun to address these needs. Section 508 of the US Code commits federal agencies to comply with standards intended to make Internet sites universally accessible. Furthermore, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that covered employers make efforts to insure that disabled employees are able to