Consider the following key feature aspects when creating adaptive agents to enable universal design features.
System or application control
Enable users to control the software system or app through the agent using their preferred or necessary interaction modality—for example, voice commands for users with visual impairments. Users should be able to provide feedback to the agent, letting it personalize the interface, prompts, and interactions based on individual preferences and context.
Information seeking
Enable users to access information through the agent, potentially beyond what's visible on the immediate interface. Users should be able to ask the agent questions at any point, whether directly related to the main content, or exploring broader or tangential topics. The agent should be able to then retrieve information from the available content or from external sources such as the internet, when possible, and should indicate whether the information source is internal or external. The agent should be able to provide summaries and answers to questions about the content, including broader topics.
Content transformation
The agent should be able to take the outputs from the software system or app and transform them to the user's preferred or necessary interaction modality, such as visual content described audibly, or audio content captioned. The agent should also work in tandem with the software system or app to deliver the transformed content in a way that optimizes the user experience. For example, when delivering audio descriptions of a video's visual content, the agent shouldn't overlay these descriptions with the video's audio track but instead, the agent should control the video playback and pause the video to insert the audio description.
Multimodal interaction
Emphasize the unique interactions that can come with a multimodal agent, which can combine modalities for richer interaction. For example, when showing an agent a picture of a restaurant's menu, the user might query the agent "what time does this place open tomorrow". Even when this information is not on the menu, the agent should be able to access that information elsewhere on the internet and deliver the correct response.