SMART-TBI: Design and Evaluation of the Social Media Accessibility and Rehabilitation Toolkit for Users with Traumatic Brain Injury

TL;DR

This work targets social participation barriers faced by individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) on social media. It introduces SMART-TBI, a suite of five aids (Writing Aid, Interpretation Aid, Filter Mode, Focus Mode, Facebook Customization) implemented as Facebook-oriented Chrome extensions to provide communication and cognitive support. The toolkit was evaluated with eight users with moderate-to-severe TBI and five rehabilitation experts, revealing both potential benefits and design challenges, including psychological safety, privacy, and mixed reactions to AI-based aids. The study offers design implications to guide the development of accessible social media platforms that accommodate cognitive and communicative needs in real-world use.

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can cause a range of cognitive and communication challenges that negatively affect social participation in both face-to-face interactions and computer-mediated communication. In particular, individuals with TBI report barriers that limit access to participation on social media platforms. To improve access to and use of social media for users with TBI, we introduce the Social Media Accessibility and Rehabilitation Toolkit (\textbf{SMART-TBI}). The toolkit includes five aids (Writing Aid, Interpretation Aid, Filter Mode, Focus Mode, and Facebook Customization) designed to address the cognitive and communicative needs of individuals with TBI. We asked eight users with moderate-severe TBI and five TBI rehabilitation experts to evaluate each aid. Our findings revealed potential benefits of aids and areas for improvement, including the need for psychological safety, privacy control, and balancing business and accessibility needs; and overall mixed reactions among the participants to AI-based aids.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: In this paper, we present the Social Media Accessibility and Rehabilitation Toolkit (SMART-TBI) that consists of five aids designed to serve as communication and cognitive support for individuals with TBI when using social media platforms. Eight users with TBI and five TBI rehabilitation experts evaluated our toolkit. The evaluation of these aids showed the usefulness of the aids as well as revealed usability challenges, informing our next steps in building accessible social media platforms for users with cognitive and communication challenges.
• Figure 2: Design process for the SMART-TBI. Our designs were motivated by the social media challenges and needs by users with TBI identified in the prior work. Focusing on communication and cognitive challenges, we proposed design goals to overcome these challenges and generate the design of the SMART-TBI. Left: a series of challenges of social media use faced by individuals with TBI; Middle: design goals to overcome these accessibility challenges; Right: five aids to provide communication support and cognitive support for social media use.
• Figure 3: An overview of the SMART-TBI. We developed two communication support aids and three cognitive support aids to assist the social media use for individuals with TBI. Communication support aids are The Writing Aid and The Interpretation Aid, and cognitive support aids are Filter Mode, Focus Mode and Facebook Customization.
• Figure 4: Procedure for Study 1: Feedback from users with TBI.