2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

and a representative from AiSquared, the company who produced the product
ZoomText.
The initial task of organising interviews proved to be a difficult process. In
many cases, general telephone enquiries were blocked at the switchboard because the
name of a specific individual in the organization could not be provided. As such,
much of the contact information for the various companies was located through
Internet searches. Once the information was located, e-mails were used to establish
contact. Although this approach was effective for many groups, there were some
organizations that could not be contacted using this method. In the case of IBM, it
was necessary to visit the local office based in Perth and to ask if they could pass an
interview request to their head office in New York, USA. Shortly after the visit to
the local office, a representative from the New York office agreed to an interview
request.
In order to gain an overall insight into the way in which government, media
and corporate policy was planned and executed, it was determined that a qualitative
methodology would be most appropriate for this area of the study. As indicated by
Cavana and Delahaye (2001), a qualitative interview approach is effective when a
problem needs to be defined, followed by the establishment of the conceptual or
theoretical framework for the study. The conceptual nature of how successful
organisations are in providing IT and Internet-related technologies to people with
disabilities suggested that this interview technique would be successful in gaining
significant knowledge about this area of study. Once the personal interview
technique was selected, the questions were designed to ensure that the required
information could be gathered from the individuals being interviewed. Hickman and
Longman (1994) indicated that there are four key points which will ensure that the
objectives for the interviews are met. These points focus on ensuring that:
! all questions asked are open questions
! the interviewer uses ‘active listening’ to incorporate follow-up questions
! notes are taken during the interviews and
! observations are used to judge if the interviewee’s answers are causing
discomfort.
75