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6.0 Conclusion

This comparison study has shown that generally the hardware and software heuristics and more importantly the detailed checkpoints match what users with disabilities require to determine if mobile phones are accessible and easy to use.

However, before these heuristics can be adopted they need to be reviewed an amended to include the findings of this report.

The evaluation included a focus group, questionnaire and interview for the mobile services.  Unfortunately due to low numbers of participants that had experience of using mobile services it was not possible to draw any conclusions at this time.

Although these heuristics have been compared against end user opinion, more testing is required so that they can be refined further to enable evaluators to use them with confidence.  This can only be done once the current heuristics, which were used for this evaluation, are reviewed and amended as necessary.  The next step of the process is to test for reliability.  This is required to determine if an evaluator can use the heuristics to obtain the same results over time and to determine if two or more evaluators get the same results.  If successful, the heuristics can be put forward with confidence as a method for improving the accessibility of mobile phones.

Finally, although this study has shown that generally these heuristics and checkpoints do match user comments, it should never be used as a total evaluation process for evaluating mobile phones.  It is indented as a first stage evaluation which can be adopted to highlight areas which may need improving to ensure the mobile phone is designed to be accessible.

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