3,572 research outputs found
MultiVis: improving access to visualisations for visually impaired people
This paper illustrates work undertaken on the MultiVis project to allow visually impaired users both to construct and browse mathematical graphs effectively. We start by discussing the need for such work, before discussing some of the problems of current technology. We then discuss Graph Builder, a novel tool to allow interactive graph construction, and Sound Bar which provides quick overview access to bar graphs
Re-Presenting Text in a Website for Visually Impaired Users using Braille Line
As new web technologies emerging and being adopted in the design of a website,
web accessibility has become a major issue especially for people with disabilities
.Limitation of assistive technology to render webpage has also been contributing
factor for poor web accessibility by the visually impaired users. This issue has
caused visually impaired users loss semantic information of webpage besides
creating frustration situation of web browsing. In this paper, factors that cause web
browsing frustration to the visually impaired users and types of tactile effects that
can be implemented in the Braille Line device to render the semantic information of
webpage are explored. The main objectives of this project is to build a website reader
and program a Braille Line 20 cell device for web browsing focusing on presenting
non visual text elements such as font attributes and text hierarchy that can be critical
to meaning of the text. Tactile technology have been chosen to be adopted in the
Braille Line as the touch is the most active sense of visually-impaired people to
acquire knowledge .From the prototype to be build, a sample group of visually
impaired users will be taken to test and evaluate the website and the device in terms
of technology as well as its effectiveness. The results and recommendations were
shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future renditions of the
project
Synchronizing Audio and Haptic to Read Webpage
Constantly emerging technologies present new interactive ways to convey
information on the Web. The new and enhanced website design has gradually
improved sighted users‟ understanding on the Web content but on the other hand,
it creates more obstacles to the visually impaired. The significant technological
gap in assistive technology and the Web presents on-going challenges to
maintain web accessibility, especially for disabled users. The limitations of
current assistive technology to convey non-textual information including text
attributes such as bold, underline, and italic from the Web further restrict the
visually impaired from acquiring comprehensive understanding of the Web
content. This project addresses this issues by investigating the problems faced by
the visually impaired when using the current assistive technology. The
significance of text attributes to support accessibility and improve understanding
of the Web content is also being studied. For this purpose several qualitative and
quantitative data collection methods are adopted to test the hypotheses. The
project also examines the relationship between multimodal technology using
audio and haptic modalities and the mental model generated by the visually
impaired while accessing webpage. The findings are then used as a framework
to develop a system that synchronizes audio and haptic to read webpages and
represents text attributes to visually impaired users is to be develop. From the
prototype built, pilot testing and user testing are conducted to evaluate the
system. The result and recommendations are shared at the end of project for
future enhancement
Web Mediators for Accessible Browsing
We present a highly accurate method for classifying web pages based on link percentage, which is the percentage of text characters that are parts of links normalized by the number of all text characters on a web page. K-means clustering is used to create unique thresholds to differentiate index pages and article pages on individual web sites. Index pages contain mostly links to articles and other indices, while article pages contain mostly text. We also present a novel link grouping algorithm using agglomerative hierarchical clustering that groups links in the same spatial neighborhood together while preserving link structure. Grouping allows users with severe disabilities to use a scan-based mechanism to tab through a web page and select items. In experiments, we saw up to a 40-fold reduction in the number of commands needed to click on a link with a scan-based interface, which shows that we can vastly improve the rate of communication for users with disabilities. We used web page classification and link grouping to alter web page display on an accessible web browser that we developed to make a usable browsing interface for users with disabilities. Our classification method consistently outperformed a baseline classifier even when using minimal data to generate article and index clusters, and achieved classification accuracy of 94.0% on web sites with well-formed or slightly malformed HTML, compared with 80.1% accuracy for the baseline classifier.National Science Foundation (IIS-0308213, IIS-039009, IIS-0093367, P200A01031, EIA-0202067
A framework for accessible m-government implementation
The great popularity and rapid diffusion of mobile technologies at worldwide level has also been recognised by the public sector, leading to the creation of m-government. A major challenge for m-government is accessibility – the provision of an equal service to all citizens irrespective of their psychical, mental or technical capabilities. This paper sketches the profiles of six citizen groups: Visually Impaired, Hearing Impaired, Motor Impaired, Speech Impaired, Cognitive Impaired and Elderly. M-government examples that target the aforementioned groups are discussed and a framework for accessible m-government implementation with reference to the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices is proposed
A Research Framework and Initial Study of Browser Security for the Visually Impaired
The growth of web-based malware and phishing attacks has catalyzed significant advances in the research and use of interstitial warning pages and modals by a browser prior to loading the content of a suspect site. These warnings commonly use visual cues to attract users\u27 attention, including specialized iconography, color, and an absence of buttons to communicate the importance of the scenario. While the efficacy of visual techniques has improved safety for sighted users, these techniques are unsuitable for blind and visually impaired users. This is likely not due to a lack of interest or technical capability by browser manufactures, where universal design is a core tenet of their engineering practices, but instead a reflection of the very real dearth of research literature to inform best practices, exacerbated by a deficit of clear methodologies for conducting studies with this population.
Indeed, the challenges are manifold. In this paper, we present the results of our study analyzing the experiences of the visually impaired with browser security warnings, detail the development and advancement of the methodological best practices when conducting a study of this kind, and ultimately identify some initial approaches that could improve the security for this population
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