Navigation methods of special needs users in multimedia systems

In today’s information society, computer users frequently need to seek for information on home pages as well as to select among software functions. A well-designed interface is essential in order to find everything necessary and meet the requirements of both the average user and users with special needs. Proper placement of objects on the screen is important to decrease perception time. One of the well-known researchers of web ergonomics, Jakob Nielsen (2006) established in an eye-tracking experiment that users scan displayed homepages in an F shape. In the present project the task was to find similar shapes in a number of playful visual search games. Several multimedia tasks were developed for this investigation. Our experiments included normal users and users with intellectual disabilities. We tested whether the characteristic searching routes and navigation methods differed between normal users and those with intellectual disabilities. The results of this investigation can inform the design and position of graphical user interface elements.