Communications of the ACM

Little research has been conducted on how to teach computer skills to developmentally disabled adults. A head counselor at a home for mentally retarded adults, who served as the inspiration for this article, was an enthusiastic personal computer user who tried to share computer instruction with home residents. Efforts at using commercial applications designed for young children were unsuccessful. Residents briefly watched the counselor use the applications, then lost interest. Staff members had neither the time nor the user interface background to investigate which applications and user interaction design factors might make computers accessible to home residents. In this article, we describe our empirical investigation of computer use among moderately developmentally disabled individuals. We investigated the input devices preferred, and the user interaction design issues to be considered when designing or selecting applications for this population.