Accessibility design for enterprise touchscreen printers

Making office products such as printers usable and accessible for a wide range of users, including those who have physical impairments is essential to providing independence and equal opportunities for people with different abilities. Hence, 508 compliance laws were set to require federal agencies and industries to follow a minimal level of accessibility. However, minimum does not really make a product fully accessible. The ultimate aim of this research is to make sure that printers work for those who are physically disabled, and to this end, user experience designers at Lexmark applied an iterative contextual research design process that includes requirements gathering and design conceptualization integrating usability techniques for user evaluation of the product. This paper provides analysis on meeting 508 requirements that are applicable to ICTs like a high-end multifunctional printer. It also focuses on keyboard navigation and voice guidance accessibility designs on the printer that has a touch screen display, running on an open-source User Interface (UI) infrastructure. Furthermore, actual results on implementing the designs were reported. An overview of findings from the usability test on the designs were also presented and it indicated that usability concerns for vision-impaired users still exist, therefore, recommendations for the next development cycle were given to improve the current accessibility designs.