Inaccessible and Deceptive: Examining Experiences of Deceptive Design with People Who Use Visual Accessibility Technology

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:
  The authors observed that current research on deceptive design patterns (or "dark patterns") primarily focuses on how user interface design influences decision-making and privacy, with little attention given to how such designs affect users relying on assistive visual technologies. Moreover, many designs may not intentionally deceive but, due to accessibility issues, manifest as deceptive design patterns for these users.

• Significance:
  As the number of users relying on assistive visual technologies increases in their daily digital lives, the negative impact of these designs on them has been severely underestimated. This situation not only exacerbates access barriers but may also impose financial burdens, cognitive fatigue, and emotional stress, further widening the digital divide.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:
  The motivation lies in providing a more nuanced analytical perspective for groups such as blind and low-vision users, expanding the understanding of deceptive design patterns, and emphasizing their interaction with accessibility issues. Previous related studies primarily focused on misclassification or fundamental accessibility gaps but lacked systematic research on the intersection and consequences of these issues.

Solution

• Proposed Method or Solution:
  The authors designed and conducted a user study involving semi-structured interviews and diary studies to collect experiences from 16 participants using assistive visual technologies in dealing with deceptive designs. Additionally, the authors utilized existing classification methods for deceptive design patterns (e.g., the seven-pattern framework by Mathur et al.) to analyze these experiences.

• Innovations:

  1. Identified six major patterns in the specific experiences of users with assistive visual technologies when encountering deceptive designs: Sneaking, Forced Action, Misdirection, Obstruction, Urgency, and Nagging.
  2. Investigated how accessibility barriers amplify the negative impacts of deceptive designs and systematically revealed, for the first time, how unintentional design flaws can transform accessibility issues into deceptive behaviors.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  1. Interviews and Data Collection: Conducted qualitative interviews to gather participants' experiences with assistive technologies and specific design patterns. Diary studies were also employed to capture more natural user feedback.
  2. Data Analysis: Used a thematic coding approach to analyze interview and diary data, aligning it with existing frameworks for classifying deceptive patterns.
  3. Supplementary Information Verification: The research team reviewed the online services mentioned by participants to further verify the actual design patterns of these services.

Research Findings

• Specific Outcomes Achieved:

  1. Documented six types of design behaviors exacerbated by the combined effects of deceptive design and accessibility barriers (e.g., sneaking and misdirection) and their direct and indirect consequences.
  2. Highlighted the additional time, physical, and emotional costs required to confront deceptive design patterns.
  3. Extended the "consequence-oriented accessibility" framework, uncovering users' trade-off strategies and hidden burdens when dealing with deceptive designs.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions:
  The framework developed by the authors not only addresses traditional deceptive patterns but also considers the unique consequences of accessibility gaps for users of assistive visual technologies. This significantly broadens the scope of existing research, such as the classification proposed by Mathur et al., which focuses solely on the experiences and perceptions of general users while neglecting the complexities and multifaceted costs faced by assistive technology users.

• Experimental and Evaluation Results:

  1. Participants widely reported various direct impacts of deceptive designs (financial, cognitive, and emotional costs) as well as indirect impacts (e.g., discomfort caused by increased reliance on assistance).
  2. Through user examples, it was revealed that some designs may not be intentionally deceptive but, due to poor accessibility design, appear as deceptive patterns for specific groups.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. The study data primarily focused on blind and low-vision users; future research should expand to other accessibility technology users (e.g., hearing-impaired users or those using cognitive enhancement software).
  2. Due to memory biases among some participants, there is a lack of quantitative descriptions of the frequency of each pattern. Quantitative studies and field observations in this area could supplement future research.
  3. Exploration of developing smarter accessibility detection tools could integrate high-level deceptive patterns (e.g., sneaking or misdirection) into detection algorithms, providing designers with more context-rich feedback.

In summary, this paper is the first to systematically study the coexistence and interaction of deceptive design and accessibility issues, providing a foundation for theoretical expansion and practical design improvements.