Universal usability revisited
Mary Zajicek, Alistair D. N. Edwards · Interacting with Computers · 2004
The papers in this Special Issue were selected for development from those presented at the second ACM SIGCHI/SIGCAPH conference on Computers and Universal Usability, CUU 2003, held in Vancouver in November 2003. and follows the first Special Issue on Universal Usability (Interacting with Computers 14, 2002). In the early days of computers, the concept of ‘universal access’ would have been meaningless. Computers were few in number, filled air-conditioned rooms and required very special skills and knowledge to operate. The range of applications was correspondingly limited—they might be used to calculated the trajectory of artillery shells or to break secrete ciphers, but they were capable of nothing that would be of any interest to the average person. The first significant change came, of course, with the advent of the personal computer, the PC. The PC was different in many ways. It was small, so that it could be used in an ordinary room. Most likely that room was an office, because although the PC was very much cheaper than its mainframe ancestor, it still cost more than the average person would want to spend. Indeed, they would not want to spend that much because they would see little benefit from owning a computer; the things they could do with it (applications they could run) were limited, and generally orientated to business requirements. There was a persistent force driving the PC market, though: the more PCs were sold, the greater numbers were manufactured and the more were built the cheaper they became. As they became cheaper there was a need to sell them, to maintain the momentum. So manufacturers had to find and to create new markets.