Chapter 10: Examining Website Preferences

The research reported up to this point in this volume has concerned specifically accessing information and with how usable and effective various Web interfaces may be in facilitating this activity. Care was taken, in those studies, to have the information comprising the Websites in question both of interest and of relevance to the participants. Nevertheless, there was of necessity an element of control and – if it isn't too strong a word – coercion. However, as mentioned earlier, there is an imperative in research with learning-disabled and other ‘vulnerable’ cohorts to attempt to be inclusive and ‘participatory’. This is one reason why it was considered essential to elicit the preferences of the participants, in addition to measuring their performances. The other reason is that however easy it might be to extract information from a particular site, if it does not appeal to its target audience it will not be used – despite the oft-heard assertion that ‘content is king’ (e.g. Stein, 2013).