Relations between Touch Target Size and Drag Distance in Mobile Applications for Users with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

In recent years, the development of mobile applications for people within the autism spectrum has proliferated to help enhance skills that could be diminished in users with this condition. However, the usability of these applications does not appear to be the focus of development because users with autism can have difficulty with fine motor skills. This article focuses on evaluating the optimal drag distance and the sizes of the interaction elements for users with Autism Spectrum Disorder. To accomplish this goal, a case study was conducted that involved 20 users with Autism Spectrum Disorder and 30 users with typical development, using a prototype generated and two applications for commercial use on 7-in. tablets. For both developed applications, a slight variation can be observed between the different groups of participants. In the interaction with Proyect@ Habilidades, the application has pictograms of 65 pixels and it has a maximum trailing distance of 340 pixels. Moreover, in Proyect@ Retratos, where there is a minimum deviation between users with levels of autism 1 and 2, it also has pictograms of 65 pixels but with a drag distance of 110 pixels. For this reason, according to the results, we suggest that in order to obtain better results in the interaction with applications aimed at users diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, the applications should have pictograms of a range of 65 pixels with a drag interaction between 110 and 340 pixels. Considering in context a 7-in. tablet with a resolution of 1280 × 800 pixels.

Usability Operations on Touch Mobile Devices for Users with Autism.

The Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a cognitive disorder that affects the cognitive and motor skills; due that, users cannot perform digital and fine motor tasks. It is necessary to create software applications that adapt to the abilities of these users. In recent years has been an increase in the research of the use of technology to support autistic users to develop their communication skills and to improve learning. However, the applications' usability for disable users is not assessed objectively as the existing models do not consider interaction operators for disable users. This article focuses on identifying the operations that can easily be performed by autistic users following the metrics of KML-GOMS, TLM and FLM. In addition, users of typical development were included in order to do a comparison between both types of users. The experiment was carried out using four applications designed for autistic users. Participants were subjects divided in two groups: level 1 and level 2 autistic users, and a group of users of typical development. During the experimentation, users performed a use case for each application; the time needed to perform each task was measured. Results show that the easiest operations for autistic users are K (Keystroke), D (Drag), Initial Act (I) and Tapping (T).