Human Factors in the Design of Arabic-Language Interfaces in Assistive Technologies for Learning Difficulties

This paper reports on insights gained from collaborations between multi-disciplinary research teams and practitioners in a Disability Service Center in King Saud University (KSU) in Saudi Arabia. Projects were conducted in the context of designing, developing and evaluating different assistive technologies in the university’s Software and Knowledge Engineering Research Group. In these projects, methodological considerations have been reported for effectively involving domain specialists in research and development projects for assistive technologies. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are often involved in the technology design cycles of these projects in various roles (e.g. design partners, design informants, testers). This paper highlights the human factors relevant for the design and evaluation of interactive systems for SpLDs that were synthesized from these collaborative contexts. We also shed light on issues to consider in the design partnerships between researchers and practitioners for requirements engineering and user acceptance testing phases of system development. Implications for the design and development of systems for SpLDs in other languages and cultural contexts are discussed.