Building a usability and accessibility evaluation method for small software development companies

Abstract

A good usability and accessibility evaluation in a development process has a direct impact on the success of the developed application, specifically due to the large number of users, which can often be of different types, with different skills and needs and interacting on different devices, in this sense, such development demands new needs and challenges that software development companies must consider. This is why these evaluation processes should be of great relevance within companies because the quality of a product depends on including and guaranteeing usability and accessibility within the developments, and the way to do this is through the evaluation of the products. However, it is not always easy to implement existing evaluation methods or strategies, due to the time, resources, personnel, etc. required and very necessary for these evaluations. Considering the importance of including these two characteristics in the software development process, this paper presents the general steps for the construction of the method and the execution of an evaluation on this first version. With the realization of this method, it is expected to contribute to improve the usability and accessibility evaluation processes in terms of time, resources, costs and experience. The project will carry out a research process, which initially seeks to identify and characterize existing evaluation methods, with these elements to build the evaluation method, which will subsequently validate its usefulness, efficiency and ease of use, through its implementation of two case studies in the Corporacion Universitaria Comfacauca—Unicomfacauca Colombia, one with students in their last semesters and another with students in their first semesters; as a result of this, it is obtained that the method is moderately easy to use, complete and viable although there are problems and needs that must be solved throughout the improvement and development of the method.