C. Baranauskas et al. (Eds.): INTERACT 2007, LNCS 4662, Part I, pp. 393–396, 2007. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007 Accessibility of Assistive Software Installation Interfaces Lucia Filgueiras 1 , Edson Sales 1 , Lucy Gruenwald 2 , Ana Maria Barbosa 2 , and Renato Facis 3 1 Escola Politecnica da Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil 2 Rede Saci, Sao Paulo, Brazil 3 LabIHC, Prodesp, Sao Paulo, Brazil {lucia.filgueiras,edson.sales}@poli.usp.br, lucygru@ciblis.net, ana@saci.org.br, rfacis@sp.gov.br Abstract. Software installation is a one-time task; yet, it should work well. Regarding assistive technologies, users with disabilities will often require help in installation tasks. Five assistive software products were evaluated in order to identify barriers faced by visually impaired users performing the installation task and none of them, for different reasons, allowed full completion of installation task. Some recommendations are devised from the experience. Keywords: Assistive technology, accessibility, installation software, usability. 1 Introduction Assistive technology is fundamental for allowing people with disabilities to use computers in their daily life. Several studies have been devoted to assistive technologies and a few of them were focused on the usability of assistive software [1]. Traditionally, the largest part of the development effort – and nowadays, also of the usability effort – has been assigned to the core application functionalities. Online help, user documentation, installation and uninstallation interfaces were always seen as secondary in this development. This is not different with assistive technologies. This paper reports the findings of usability evaluations performed on five assistive software tools, and focuses on the user experience with the installation interface. Section 2 presents issues about installation interfaces. Section 3 presents the evaluated assistive software products. Section 4 reviews the method and results obtained. 2 Installation Interface Usability Installation interfaces peculiarities have motivated little research to the moment [2], [3]. Installation and uninstallation software is considered part of user documentation, according to IEEE Std 1063 [4].. Seffah and Metzker regretted that “developers with any HCI background, unfortunately by ignorance, are asked to develop software artifacts that we know have a direct impact on usability including help systems, training plans and resources, user documentation, technical support as well as installation and configuration procedures.” [5]