Chapter 9: ‘Random’, ‘Direct’ and ‘Iterative’ Access

In the last chapter, the phenomenon of ‘serial access’ was introduced. The research detailed showed clearly that under specific conditions, people with learning disabilities consume information in a linear manner that entails accessing every word serially and indiscriminately. This behaviour was exposed during usability tests and an online game. Both activities required participants to search for information, as designated by the researcher. The information either consisted of meaningful phrases (albeit that could be found even without complete understanding of their meaning) or single words.

However, behaviour under other circumstances was observed. This is because the first part of all the usability studies, except those where different interfaces were compared, asked participants to freely browse whatever Website was being examined – an activity very different from that where specific information was required. To enrich observations of this, they were invited to offer a ‘running commentary’ on their actions where possible, and even evaluate the site as they did so. This technique is commonly called ‘Think-aloud’ (Lewis, 1982) and is common practice in usability studies.