Profile-based web document delivery

This work originated by considering the needs of visually impaired users but may have wider application. A profile captures some key descriptors or preferences of a user and their browsing device. Individual users may maintain any number of profiles which they can edit for use in different situations, for different tasks or with different devices. A profile is described in terms of essentiality and proficiency. Essentiality is used to control the quantity of information that is transmitted and proficiency is used to control the format. Various levels of essentiality are introduced into a document by the technique known as microformatting. Proficiency (for the visually impaired) includes a description of minimum acceptable font size, preferred font face and preferred text and background colours. A key feature of the proficiency profile is the accessibility component which captures the user's tolerance of accessibility issues in a document, for example the presence of images or the markup of tables. The document delivery tool works as a kind of filter to reduce the content to the level of essentiality requested, to make the various presentation changes and to warn of accessibility issues as specified in the user's profile. Encouraging preliminary results have been obtained from testing the prototype with subjects from the local RNIB college

Profile-based web document delivery

This work originated by considering the needs of visually impaired users but may have wider application. A profile captures some key descriptors or preferences of a user and their browsing device. Individual users may maintain any number of profiles which they can edit for use in different situations, for different tasks or with different devices. A profile is described in terms of essentiality and proficiency. Essentiality is used to control the quantity of information that is transmitted and proficiency is used to control the format. Various levels of essentiality are introduced into a document by the technique known as microformatting. Proficiency (for the visually impaired) includes a description of minimum acceptable font size, preferred font face and preferred text and background colours. A key feature of the proficiency profile is the accessibility component which captures the user's tolerance of accessibility issues in a document, for example the presence of images or the markup of tables. The document delivery tool works as a kind of filter to reduce the content to the level of essentiality requested, to make the various presentation changes and to warn of accessibility issues as specified in the user's profile. Encouraging preliminary results have been obtained from testing the prototype with subjects from the local RNIB college

Accessibility Verification of WWW Documents by an Automatic Guideline Verification Tool

Since the World Wide Web (WWW) is currently the principal infrastructure used by the general public, web site creators are required to build universally accessible sites. Accessibility guidelines such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) show the creators how to make accessible web pages. Also, tools which automatically verify whether or not a given web page complies with the guidelines are provided. Although those tools are useful, applying them to any document format other than HTML or any guidelines other than WCAG is difficult, since these tools assume a fixed set of guidelines (e.g., WCAG) and a fixed document format (e.g., HTML). That is, changing the built-in guidelines (e.g., verifying whether a given document complies with the guidelines defined by their organization) requires modifying the tool. This paper proposes a simple and clear language for specifying guidelines, and discusses a verification tool which has the following characteristics. • A guideline specification is separated from the tool and can be easily modified. • An arbitrary XML document can be verified. • The tool can be used not only for accessibility guideline verification but also for complex syntactic checking. We also present the verification results conducted on about 3,000 web pages of forty major organizations in the U.S.A. and Japan using our verification tool

Web Accessibility of the Higher Education Institute Websites Based on the World Wide Web Consortium and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act

The problem observed in this study is the low level of compliance of higher education website accessibility with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The literature supports the non-compliance of websites with the federal policy in general. Studies were performed to analyze the accessibility of fifty-four sample web pages using automated testing via auto-validation tools and using manual testing via assistive technology, followed by a comparative analysis of the findings of the auto validation tools. The auto-validation tools utilized on the sample web pages were comprised of three W3C validation tools. The results showed that two-thirds of the websites failed Priority 1 validation, while one hundred percent of the websites failed to meet the Priority 2 and Priority 3 validation. In addition, three web pages were tested against Section 508 guidelines. The result of the manual testing by assistive technology confirmed that all three websites failed to meet the minimum requirement of federal policy. Moreover, a comparative analysis between the validations of the W3C tools showed that significant differences existed between the findings of each auto-validation tool. The findings of this study implied that passing the evaluations of auto validation tools is not enough to ensure accessible websites to individuals with disabilities. It is important to utilize assistive tools to determine web accessibility as it appears to individuals with disabilities. Recommendations were made for improvements such as encouraging universities to provide training for website managers and implementing the mandatory use of screen-readers as a validation tool

Using an essentiality and proficiency approach to improve the web browsing experience of visually impaired users

Increased volumes of content exacerbate the Web accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Essentiality & Proficiency is presented as one method of easing access to information in Websites by addressing the volume of content coupled with how it is presented. This research develops the concept of Essentiality for Web authors. A preliminary survey was conducted to understand the accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants and a further 26 participants responded to online questionnaires. In total there were 38 participants (both sexes), aged 18 to 54 years. 68% had visual impairments, three had motor issues, one had a hearing impairment and two had cognitive impairments. The findings show that the overload of information on a page was the most prominent difficulty experienced when using the Web. The findings from the preliminary survey fed into an empirical study. Four participants aged 21 to 54 years (both sexes) from the preliminary survey were presented with a technology demonstrator to check the feasibility of Essentiality & Proficiency in the real environment. It was found that participants were able to identify and appreciate the reduced volume of information. This initiated the iterative development of the prototype tool. Microformatting is used in the development of the Essentiality & Proficiency prototype tool to allow the reformulated Web pages to remain standards compliant. There is a formative evaluation of the prototype tool using an experimental design methodology. A convenience sample of nine participants (both sexes) with a range of visual impairments, aged 18 to 52 performed tasks on a computer under three essentiality conditions. With an alpha level .05, the evaluation of the Essentiality & Proficiency tool has been shown to offer some improvement in accessing information

Using an essentiality & proficiency approach to improve the web browsing experience of visually impaired users

Increased volumes of content exacerbate the Web accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Essentiality & Proficiency is presented as one method of easing access to information in Websites by addressing the volume of content coupled with how it is presented. This research develops the concept of Essentiality for Web authors. A preliminary survey was conducted to understand the accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants and a further 26 participants responded to online questionnaires. In total there were 38 participants (both sexes), aged 18 to 54 years. 68% had visual impairments, three had motor issues, one had a hearing impairment and two had cognitive impairments. The findings show that the overload of information on a page was the most prominent difficulty experienced when using the Web. The findings from the preliminary survey fed into an empirical study. Four participants aged 21 to 54 years (both sexes) from the preliminary survey were presented with a technology demonstrator to check the feasibility of Essentiality & Proficiency in the real environment. It was found that participants were able to identify and appreciate the reduced volume of information. This initiated the iterative development of the prototype tool. Microformatting is used in the development of the Essentiality & Proficiency prototype tool to allow the reformulated Web pages to remain standards compliant. There is a formative evaluation of the prototype tool using an experimental design methodology. A convenience sample of nine participants (both sexes) with a range of visual impairments, aged 18 to 52 performed tasks on a computer under three essentiality conditions. With an alpha level .05, the evaluation of the Essentiality & Proficiency tool has been shown to offer some improvement in accessing information.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Using an essentiality & proficiency approach to improve the web browsing experience of visually impaired users

Increased volumes of content exacerbate the Web accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Essentiality & Proficiency is presented as one method of easing access to information in Websites by addressing the volume of content coupled with how it is presented. This research develops the concept of Essentiality for Web authors. A preliminary survey was conducted to understand the accessibility issues faced by people with visual impairments. Structured interviews were conducted with twelve participants and a further 26 participants responded to online questionnaires. In total there were 38 participants (both sexes), aged 18 to 54 years. 68% had visual impairments, three had motor issues, one had a hearing impairment and two had cognitive impairments. The findings show that the overload of information on a page was the most prominent difficulty experienced when using the Web. The findings from the preliminary survey fed into an empirical study. Four participants aged 21 to 54 years (both sexes) from the preliminary survey were presented with a technology demonstrator to check the feasibility of Essentiality & Proficiency in the real environment. It was found that participants were able to identify and appreciate the reduced volume of information. This initiated the iterative development of the prototype tool. Microformatting is used in the development of the Essentiality & Proficiency prototype tool to allow the reformulated Web pages to remain standards compliant. There is a formative evaluation of the prototype tool using an experimental design methodology. A convenience sample of nine participants (both sexes) with a range of visual impairments, aged 18 to 52 performed tasks on a computer under three essentiality conditions. With an alpha level .05, the evaluation of the Essentiality & Proficiency tool has been shown to offer some improvement in accessing information.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Une méthode d'inspection automatique de recommandations ergonomiques tout au long du processus de conception des applications Web

Les applications Web actuelles offrent de plus en plus de services. Pour éviter les difficultés d'usage de ces applications, l'utilisabilité doit être assurée. L'évaluation de l'utilisabilité est une tâche qui requiert une expertise en ergonomie logicielle. Cette expertise peut être capitalisée sous forme de recommandations qui sont l'expression d'une connaissance en ergonomie et qui vont aider à l'évaluation. Toutefois, puisqu'il est nécessaire d'appliquer celles-ci de manière systématique, leur inspection manuelle peut s'avérer laborieuse. Pour ne pas être limité par l'inspection manuelle, des outils ont été développés pour guider et supporter l'inspection automatique. Un des avantages de ces outils est que les connaissances en ergonomie y sont directement intégrées. De plus, le manque d'experts et le coût élevé des autres méthodes d'évaluation font que l'inspection automatique est une méthode adaptée. Cependant, ces outils ne peuvent évaluer que l'application finale et si des erreurs sont détectées, des modifications importantes de l'application peuvent avoir lieu. Dans cette thèse nous proposons une méthode d'évaluation basée sur modèles permettant de s'assurer tout au long du cycle de vie de l'utilisabilité des applications Web développées. Nous avons établi une ontologie qui organise les recommandations autour des éléments de l'interface pour identifier précisément quels éléments évaluer à chaque étape du cycle de vie. Cette ontologie est exploitée pour vérifier l'utilisabilité sur les différents artefacts produits dans le cycle de vie. Ces travaux ont été appliqués et validés à l'échelle industrielle sur une plateforme de développement de téléservices.The increasing use of the Web as a software platform together with the advance of technology has promoted Web applications as a start point for delivering information and services. Facing to the ever growing number of users, usability became a major requirement for the universal access of Web applications. In the last years, a number of evaluation methods have been developed by researchers, practitioners and Information Technology companies to help organizations to identify and to fix usability problems. However, usability evaluation of Web sites is not a straightforward process. On one hand, usability evaluation requires some knowledge and expertise in software ergonomics. One the other hand, due to constant evolution of Web application, it is required frequent evaluations to make sure that content updates do not introduce new usability problems. In order to overcome these limitations, much effort has been devoted in the development of tools for automating the inspection of usability and accessibility guidelines. However, tools currently available can only evaluate the final applications. In this thesis we propose a model-based evaluation method that allows ensuring the ergonomic quality of Web applications throughout the lifecycle. We developed an ontology that organizes recommendations around interface elements of a Web application and that allows identifying precisely what elements to evaluate at each phase of the lifecycle. We exploit this ontology to assess the various artifacts produced throughout the lifecycle. This work has been applied and validated at an industrial scale on an e-service development platform

Conocimientos sin Fronteras: Colaboración Científica e Institucional en Documentación e Información

Organizado en tres bloques que llevan por título Comunicación científica, Patrimonio documental e Información y Documentación, presenta trabajos referidos a los más diversos temas que hoy en día son objeto de estudio en el ámbito de la investigación en Biblioteconomía y Documentación. La coautoría, la colaboración científica, la inteligencia colectiva, el análisis y descripción de distintas colecciones patrimoniales bibliográficas, los usuarios de la información, la web, el uso de WhatsApp, el nuevo papel de los archivos y un largo etcétera, constituyen el contenido de los más de treinta trabajos que se presentan, fruto, algunos de ellos, de la cooperación entre autores pertenecientes a la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, la Universidad de Extremadura y la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Presencia de autores en ResearchGate y Google Scholar. El caso del área de Biblioteconomía y Documentación (LIS)

El uso científico y académico que se hace de las redes sociales cada día es más importante. La comunicación virtual, el uso de métricas e indicadores, diferentes medidas de rendimiento, etc. están disponibles de una manera sencilla para los investigadores e instituciones. El artículo analiza la presencia, en las dos redes sociales académicas más significativas, ResearchGate y Google Scholar, de los autores de las revistas pertenecientes al área de Biblioteconomía y Documentación (Library and Information Science) situadas en el índice Scimago Journal Ranking (SJR), del año 2016. Más del 60% de los autores tienen presencia activa en ambas redes científicas y más del 85% de los que han publicado más de un artículo, también. Con estos datos se confirma la evolución de los últimos años en materia de difusión de las obras y la evidencia del cambio de paradigma que supone el empleo de estas redes en acceso abierto para aumentar la visibilidad y el impacto del científico