BS EN ISO 9241-1:1997

1 Scope
2 Normative reference
3 Definitions
4 General introduction to ISO 9241
    4.1 Purpose and intended users
    4.2 Product specifications, technological change and
          the user-performance approach
5 Structure of ISO 9241
6 Guidance on use of ISO 9241
7 Reporting conformance to parts of ISO 9241
Annex A (informative) Bibliography

Discusses ergonomic requirements for office work using visual display terminals, including guidelines for a user-performance approach, giving a wide range of generic text and data processing applications. Also gives an overview of ISO 9241 and specifies its use.

This part of ISO9241

• introduces the multipart standard on ergonomic requirements for the use of visual display terminals for office tasks;

• provides guidelines for a user-performance approach;

• gives an overview of all parts of ISO9241 currently published and of the anticipated content of those in preparation;

• provides some guidance on how to use ISO9241;

• describes how conformance to ISO9241 should be reported.

For the purposes of ISO9241, office tasks are taken to include a wide range of generic text and data processing tasks. Due to the similarity of these tasks to tasks performed in other environments, e.g. medical, scientific, telecommunications, control rooms and public access, many of the requirements in ISO9241 are appropriate to these environments as well.

ISO9241 does not cover electrical safety of VDTs. This is covered by IEC950.

NOTE— The ergonomic requirements of flat panel displays are covered in ISO13406‑1 and ISO13406‑2. More extensive guidance on human-centred design for interactive systems is provided in ISO13407.