“The Internet is Hard. Is Words”: Investigating Information Search Difficulties Experienced by People with Aphasia and Strategies for Combatting Them

People rely on online information for important life tasks such as managing personal finances and understanding medical symptoms. However, due to its intrinsically language-focused nature, online search poses considerable difficulties for people with language impairments. Currently these difficulties are poorly understood. We report findings from an observation of the information search behavior of 12 people with aphasia. We identify a wide range of difficulties and strategies aimed at combating them, spanning the entire information search process. Findings include previously unreported difficulties and strategies that highlight the importance of designing search technologies to better support the complex needs of people who find language challenging, such as by facilitating word finding cueing strategies, error prevention and recovery, browsing, appropriation, text interpretation and and by decreasing reliance on language competency in general. This has the potential not only to benefit searchers with language impairments, but to make information search easier for all.

About the speaker:

Andy is a Reader in Information Retrieval and is a member of the Centre for HCI Design at City, with interests currently focus on a number of areas including disabilities and Information Retrieval (dyslexia and aphasia in particular), AI techniques for Information Retrieval and Filtering, and Image Retrieval.