Browsing shortcuts as a means to improve information seeking of blind people in the WWW

Abstract

This paper presents a ''Semantic Web application framework'' which allows different applications to be designed and developed for improving the accessibility of the World Wide Web (WWW). The framework promotes the idea of creating a community of people federating into groups (ontology creators, annotators, user-agent developers, end-users) each playing a specific role, without the coordination of any central authority. The use of a specialised voice web browser for blind people, called SeEBrowser, is presented and discussed as an example of an accessibility tool developed based on the framework. SeEBrowser utilises annotations of web pages and provides browsing shortcuts. Browsing shortcuts are mechanisms, which facilitate blind people in moving efficiently through various elements of a web page (e.g. functional elements such as forms, navigational aids etc.) during the information-seeking process, hence operating effectively as a vital counterbalance to low accessibility. Finally, an experimental user study is presented and discussed which evaluates SeEBrowser with and without the use of browsing shortcuts.

User Interface Personalization for the WWW Using Adaptive Browsing Shortcuts

“…On the other hand, using the serialised access the user enters the main content area which has the relevant material rather later. To test the hypothesis if browsing shortcuts can assist blind users in web browsing we conducted a series of experiments which are reported in [7]. The results show that in fact there are statistically significant differences when the browsing shortcuts feature is used in comparison to navigation without using browsing shortcuts.…”

“…[8]). Within this research effort we developed a voice web browser for blind people, called SeEBrowser (Semantically Enhanced Browser [7]). …”

“…), hence operating effectively as an interaction method and a vital counterbalance to low accessibility of web pages. Results of several quantitative analysis which measured navigation performance and cognitive overhead criteria (task completion time, number of keystrokes, web page reading times) with and without the use of browsing shortcuts, showed that browsing shortcuts has a statistically significant positive effect on navigation performance of blind people [7].…”

Tending a Wild Garden: Library Web Design for Persons with Disabilities

“…Information seeking on the Web is a complex process requiring "the ability to switch and coordinate among multiple information-seeking strategies" such as browsing, scanning, query-based searching, and so on. 25 If Web browsers could translate formatting and presentation into audio tailored to the needs of the visually impaired, the use of the Internet would be a far more satisfying experience for those users. However, such Web programming would require years of additional research and development.…”

Adaptive Browsing Shortcuts: Personalising the User Interface of a Specialised Voice Web Browser for Blind People

“…To test the hypothesis if browsing shortcuts can assist blind users in web browsing we conducted a series of experiments which are reported in [7]. The results show that in fact there are statistically significant differences when the browsing shortcuts feature is used in comparison to navigation without browsing shortcuts.…”